This spring, architecture students, professors, and volunteers associated with the School of Architecture and Volterra-Detroit Foundation were offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel to Volterra, Italy, to help digitally archive the first ancient amphitheater discovery in Europe in 150 years.
13 particiapnts settled into the Etruscan-era town to digitally scan and record the amphitheater, which measures approximately 84 meters (275 feet) long and 66 meters (216 feet) wide.
“The majority of amphitheaters known today did not have to be ‘discovered,’ as their remains were at such scale that they were known centuries ago, like [the] Colosseum,” explains Professor of Architecture and program lead Wladek Fuchs. “As far as I know, there are no studies of the history of discoveries of the amphitheaters, for exactly that reason—that most of them were never completely lost.”