Franco Malosso von Rosenfranz boasted that the Berico Maritime Amphitheatre near the north-eastern city of Vicenza was ‘the oldest and largest,among the most spectacular in the world’ (Picture: Google Maps)

It wasn’t immediately obvious that the Berico Maritime Amphitheatre was one of the greatest hoaxes of all time,but there were signs.

Franco Malosso von Rosenfranz,an Italian conman,claimed that he had stumbled across the Roman construction in the north-eastern city of Vicenza after a landslide in 2005.

He confidently told tourists that it was the ‘oldest and largest’ amphitheatre and ‘among the most spectacular in the world’.

He said it was originally constructed in the year 393,Julius Caesar had visited on his return from Egypt with Cleopatra,and Juliet Capulet of Shakespeare fame had lived in an ancient church there.

The problem is that 69-year-old von Rosenfranz’s account of history – which he charged €40 a head for tourists to hear – is a load of codswallop.

Julius Caesar lived over 400 years before the amphitheatre was ‘constructed’,Juliet lived in Verona (not where we lay our scene) and the ‘393AD’ materials included fibreglass and papier-mache columns,stuccoed blocks and plaster statues from the early 2000s.

Franco Malosso pictured during a protest outside The Hague in 2001 (Picture: Getty)

Von Rosenfranz’s deceit had been so successful that he even fooled the local government who included the site in a tourism promotion guide and app.

But in 2016,his lies caught up with him and the Italian Carabinieri (local police force) called in some archaeologists.

Satellite images revealed von Rosenfranz had flattened a hill and built the fake site at the top of it. Older images showed there was no such ancient structure there.

When the scam was uncovered,Vicenza’s deputy mayor Jacopo Bulgarini D’Elci decried it as ‘one of the most incredible hoaxes since Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds’.

Malosso was jailed this week for illegal construction,forgery of works of art,and the production of artefacts without authorisation.

He was jailed for two years and four months and fined €3,000.

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