Massive LEGO Colosseum and Arch of Constantine

My mind hurts thinking about the instruction book you'd have to write for this one, but it is quite the nerdtastic feast! All hail builder Ryan McNaught, who built this for the University of Sydney using over 200,000 blocks! See more over at Gizmodo.

Centurions Occupy Colosseum, Fight With Cops

If you've been to the Colosseum in Rome, you've seen the guys in Roman centurion uniforms dunning the tourists for a couple lire or euro in exchange for some photos.  It's cheesy but I never minded - only wished they had a little bit more authentic armor.

This week the routine got exciting: a group of angry centurions occupied the Colosseum before Easter in protest at new rules removing them from archaeological areas, as part of the Soprintendenza Archeologica's initiative to 'clean up' the area from illegal vendors. Yesterday they escalated: centurions climbed up to the second level of the Colosseum and hung banners, demanding legalization of their work. Passing tourists cheered them on as a scuffle broke out between the cops and the reenactors.

"Hey hey, ho ho, our tax free income's got to go!"

This must have been the only profession in Italy that doesn't require at least five official permits. The protesters' demands are kind of bizarre: according to AFP, they want to be regulated!

"Rome city hall has agreed to give a work permit to historical impersonators like centurions. But these are just promises. The last negotiation was yesterday. We still haven't received anything concrete," Sonnino said.

"We want rules, we want to pay taxes!" he added.

It's apparently a competitive job: an article in Time last year  described cops who went undercover as gladiators but got beat down by the reenactor mafia:

Officers strapped on togas and sandals themselves to investigate the costumed combatants. When the disguised gladiator officers attempted to take pictures with tourists, the rival gladiators allegedly attacked them. That’s when other undercover police, dressed as tourists and garbage collectors, swooped in to arrest the aggressors. According to the BBC, the domineering gladiators were working with five tourist agencies to control the market.

Italy is such an alternate reality sometimes.

Video of the brief cop-centurion smackdown below.

Read on for more archaeo-protests from Egypt, Libya, Mexico, Greece, and, yes, Rome!


Corriere della Sera has video:

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Students occupy Colosseum, Tower of Pisa

This afternoon students protesting austerity plans for Italy's education system occupied iconic monuments around Italy, including the Colisseum and the leaning tower in Pisa.

Photo IGN

The proposed cuts of over €12 billion would reduce dramatically student stipends, research funds, cut course offerings, and cost 130,000 jobs. Protests gripped Rome, Florence, Bologna, Pisa, and many other cities. As jaded as I am about protests, I was gripped by the drama of occupying these ancient monuments. (Though the students' attempt to bum rush the Italian Senate chambers was good too.)

Photo ADN

Scuffles between cops and students broke out here in Rome, where I happen to be today to have Thanksgiving with some friends - we saw my student and researcher comrades on the march but were home to start on Thanksgiving dinner before the tear gas started smoking.

The "education reforms" proposed by the governments are a Trojan horse for privatization and slashing "unproductive" subjects like literature and the arts. The symbolic connection between the monuments of ancient culture and contemporary knowledge under threat is kind of forced, but it still works for me. Probably because I agree with the analysis on the Italian street - those who created the economic crisis took the world economic on a long speculative binge, and now that they're hung over they want the rest of us to pay their bar bill for them by sacrificing our futures. Hell with that.

Finally: a bunch of people made these effigies of classic books as shields for scuffling with the cops. Petronius' Satyricon as riot equipment? I think Encolpius would appreciate those priapic police batons.

Literature fights the man (Rainnews.it)