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\n\t\t\t\tRome’s Cassazione Court of Cassation, Italy’s highest criminal court, is seen in this undated photo. The court this week rejected the final appeal of a 69-year-old Italian man convicted of several crimes in relation to his construction of a tourist attraction in northern Italy which he falsely claimed held neolithic, Greek and Roman ruins. (Gregorio Borgia\/AP)
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VICENZA, Italy \u2014 An Italian man who built an artificial ancient Roman amphitheater, billed it as the real thing and charged visitors 40 euros to see it is behind bars after losing a prolonged legal battle.<\/p>\n
The Berico Maritime Amphitheater covers nearly 54,000 square feet of formerly wooded land in Arcugnano, a hilly community south of Vicenza that is among the popular areas for U.S. military personnel to live with their families.<\/p>\n
But the claim of owner Franco Malosso that the structure dates to 393, during the reign of Emperor Theodosius the Great, was more than a little stretch of the truth.<\/p>\n
He also said the site had ties to both Julius Caesar and the fictional Shakespeare character Juliet Capulet and held neolithic, Greek and Roman remains.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s top court rejected Malosso\u2019s\u00a0final appeal and upheld convictions by two lower courts on charges of illegal construction, forgery of artworks and creation of unauthorized artifacts, Italian media reported this week.<\/p>\n
The 69-year-old Malosso, who dubbed himself Franco Alessandro Molosso Maltarel von Rosenfranz, is now reportedly serving a prison term of two years and four months in Liguria, near the border with France.<\/p>\n
A self-styled philanthropist, entrepreneur, orchestra conductor and historian, Malosso claimed that a 2005 landslide unearthed what he had touted as among the oldest and largest amphitheaters in the world, according to Italian media.<\/p>\n
Somehow, he managed to convince local officials to include it in an EU-funded tourism guide and app for the Vicenza area.<\/p>\n
But the \u201cruins\u201d were in fact built from artificially aged modern materials like fiberglass, concrete and plaster, investigators found after local authorities became suspicious about a decade ago.<\/p>\n
The semicircular structure of tiered stone seats was built into an excavated hillside on protected land without the proper planning or permits, authorities said. In addition, it\u2019s technically a theater, whereas an amphitheater is round or oval. <\/p>\n
City officials tipped off Vicenza prosecutors to the hoax in 2016, Italian media reports.<\/p>\n
Part of Malosso\u2019s defense was that the forgery couldn\u2019t have deceived anyone because it was so ham-fisted. Italy\u2019s Supreme Court of Cassation rejected that argument, Vicenza Today reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n