After 2000 years, gladiators all set to return to the Colosseum

Washington, Jan 7 (ANI): Fascinated by gladiators? Well, then here's your chance to get close and personal with the Roman fighters, for they are soon going to return to Rome's Colosseum to display their antics, local authorities have announced.

The gladiators will return to the country's most famous fight arena almost 2,000 years after their bloody sport last entertained Roman crowds.

Umberto Broccoli, the head of archaeology at Rome's city council, said that in 2009, the five million people who visit the Colosseum each year will get to experience "the sights, sounds and smells" of ancient Rome.

"We do not need to enshrine historical sites and monuments, we need to make them more spectacular. Museums and monuments must speak to the public in a new way," the Discovery News quoted Broccoli as telling La Repubblica.

As far as Broccoli's plan goes, modern-day gladiators will engage in realistically choreographed mock fights.

The new-age gladiators would wear original costumes and the same combat gear-swords, tridents, nets and daggers- that was used 2,000 years ago.

Their famous contests will be re-enacted and staged in the evening, accompanied by readings from the works of Latin poets such as Seneca.

However, the authorities have not yet disclosed if gladiators would fight on a stage over the arena's subterranean chambers and tunnels or on a stage outside the Colosseum.

He claimed that the gladiator fights would not be a Disneyland-like attraction, instead it would be more of a serious project to bring the sporting heroes of antiquity alive.

Also, Broccoli dismissed fears that the combats might appear too crude.

"The gladiators themselves were vulgar. They were sweaty, they stank and they swore. Why not show them as they really were?" said Broccoli. (ANI)