Colosseum Won\'t Be Restored in a Day, but Work Is Finally Scheduled to Start

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

ROME - Italian cultural officials announced Tuesday that a 25-million-euro restoration of the Colosseum (about $31 million) sponsored by the luxury goods maker Tod's would finally begin in December. The start date of the project had been up in the air after a consumers rights association challenged in court the allocation of the sponsorship to Tod's, asserting that other potential benefactors had been shut out of the bid. On July 4 a regional court threw out the complaint, but the consumers association has vowed to appeal.

The appeal will not affect the work, said Mariarosa Barbera, the culture official who oversees archaeological monuments in Rome.

Diego Della Valle, the chairman of Tod's, said that the legal wrangling should give Italians pause. “Even if they are small, local polemics, they can leave a mark,” he said at a crowded news conference in Rome. The message that such squabbles risk giving, he sa id, “is that it's better that people stay away from Italy if they want to be patrons of the arts.”

Instead, he said he hoped his financial backing would be an incentive to other businessmen, both Italian and foreign, “to do the same to restore other monuments.”

The first stage of work involves cleaning and restoring the first century A.D. monument's multiply arcaded façade and the substitution of the metal enclosures that seal off the ground-level arches. The work is expected to end by mid-2015. The project also calls for the creation of a services center, and for the restoration of the various galleries and underground spaces inside the Colosseum.

“No Roman monument was built so that it would last for eternity,” Ms. Barbera said, adding that was the duty of modern conservators “to prolong its life.”