"Tudsz arról, hogy régi római térképvázlattal a kezében Petrarca nem találta meg a Collosseumot?"

Nesze, egy friss hír.

Most találták meg a harmadaik legnagyobb ismert római amfiteátrumot Cordobában.
Egy autóparkoló építése közben. :)

Azért ezek a nagyfarkú humanisták messzire számított hamisításokkal operáltak. :))

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s954866.htm

Roman 'gladiatorial combat' site unearthed in Spain

Archaeologists in the southern Spanish city of Cordoba have uncovered the third-largest known Roman amphitheatre measured by ground surface, after Rome's Colosseum and Carthage in Tunisia, municipal authorities said.

The elliptical site is 178 metres at its widest point, just ten metres less than the Colosseum which was built 40 years later.

"With an estimated capacity of 30,000 to 50,000, it was built for gladiatorial combat during the reigns of emperors Claudius and Nero in the first century, some 50 years after Christ," Desiderio Vaquerizo Gil, professor of archaeology at the University of Cordoba said.

Mr Vaquerizo said the site was ransacked at some point between the fourth and seventh centuries before Arab forces conquered the southern region of Andalusia early in the eighth Century.

The ruins first came to light last November during construction of a car park at Cordoba's University of Veterinary Science but only now has it become clear that the site is a major find.

Various epigraphs have also been discovered, including the largest collection of gladiator epitaphs known outside Rome, as well as references to a gladiator school, the only one known to have existed in the Roman province of Hispania, according to Mr Vaquerizo.

Of the original site only four to five metre-high sections of wall remain from their original height, which experts estimate at between 15 and 20 metres.

The discovery of the amphitheatre comes as the latest in a series of significant finds over the past decade, which include a circus and a theatre, as well as thermal baths and Roman houses decorated with mosaics.

Cordoba was already prior to those findings a UNESCO world heritage site thanks to its Arab-Andalus architecture and its Mezquita, a mosque converted into a cathedral.

Cordoba University, which is to hand over stewardship of the Roman sites to the city, now plans to create an archaeological park with the aid of the municipal authorities to showcase the finds.

--AFP