Challenge: Coliseum Still In Use

Blackwood

Banned
Your challenge: Find a way for the Roman Coliseum, in Rome, to still be in use for entertainment purposes today. The type of entertainment is up to you. However, no entertainment of the kind that goes on in the Coliseum OTL. POD must be post-1500.

I suppose what makes this more difficult than the simply "entertain the people" is to find an effective reason that makes this entertainment worthwhile and affordable to whoever controls Rome. You are allowed to have the Coliseum be demolished to make way for a new one, if it must be. Let's try to make this at least semi-plausible.

Good luck!
 
Your challenge: Find a way for the Roman Coliseum, in Rome, to still be in use for entertainment purposes today. The type of entertainment is up to you. However, no entertainment of the kind that goes on in the Coliseum OTL. POD must be post-1500.

I suppose what makes this more difficult than the simply "entertain the people" is to find an effective reason that makes this entertainment worthwhile and affordable to whoever controls Rome. You are allowed to have the Coliseum be demolished to make way for a new one, if it must be. Let's try to make this at least semi-plausible.

Good luck!

Either Rome gets the Olympics sometime before WWII, or the shrine there gets turned by one of the builder-Popes into a church, like the Pantheon.
 

Hendryk

Banned
A couple of Roman-era arenas in southern France are still being used, mostly for corridas, as in Nîmes and in Arles. So it's not so much of a stretch to see the Coliseum still in use.

800px-Nimes_amphi.jpg
 
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