As the gamut of profitable goods becomes stagnant and market competition reaches its limit, the final marketable aspect is experience. This is why high-end restaurants have turned into performance art shows. You can't really compete just on food anymore, you have to provide a unique experience. The future of commerce is selling experiences more than selling quality goods.
I don't know much about Italian politics but I assume Rome is strapped for cash as well as other major tourist locations featuring historical sites. I think the various orgs who own and run these sites are going to start doing this kind of stuff. They're going to turn the sites into unique locals for restaurants, venues, and other businesses. A restaurant in The Great Pyramid. A U2 concert in the Colosseum. A strip mall on Stonehenge.
Of course it won't happen fast and it won't be as gaudy starting out.
https://archive.is/5V4Yf#selection-991.0-995.244
One decision has already been made which may disappoint fans of Gladiator, the Oscar-winning film. Despite earlier plans to bring back gladiators for mock battles, Ms Russo said that the ministry was aiming higher. She said: “The arena will be used for high culture, meaning concerts or theatre but no gladiator shows.”
Yes it will start out as high-tech but historically respectful. Preserve the site, but offer some flexibility in how it's displayed. Only "high culture" allowed. So opera, theater, that kind of stuff. That is until a decade or two from now when Rome needs even more cash and they decide to start letting pop bands play there. If they can pull it off then other places will start doing it to make up revenue.
Sure this isn't super new. People have been exploiting these sites for centuries. But I feel a lot of them have been able to strike a balance between commercialization and being a museum. With everything going to shit though, I think things will tip into commercialization's favor and we're going to get billboards on the great wonders of the world. Or they'll slowly be chopped up and sold off to commercial/private interests. We're going to see a hiving off of culture the way we've seen it happen to all public interests.
I got to hear the opera Turandot in Verona in a Roman amphitheater from the first century AD. You can byo wine in paper cups (no glass) and they hand out candles. The show starts at dusk with everyone lighting the candles. It's 10 euro a ticket and there's a youth hostel with many beds in a large room that has a curfew but let's you return after curfew if you see the opera and go straight back. Can't recommend it enough if you can get to Verona (by train!) after Covid is over.
It seems the difference between venues is Rome's Colosseum has fallen into disrepair over the centuries while the Verona one has been kept up, even through the outer ring was destroyed in an earthquake in 1117. I can see why they want to build a retractable floor and instead of restore it, because I imagine a restoration would be inaccurate and require mining of more stone and end up more expensive. There are more areas like an entire block or two that is a cat sanctuary among old roman building, or the ruins of the circus maximus, that if demolished for space it would be a great loss, moreso than restoring the Colosseum to functionality.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona_Arena
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/torre-argentina-roman-cat-sanctuary
I wonder how the acoustics are for that place. It's funny to me when people go see a live performance in Chicago, sit in the lawn for like a picnic or something and only to realize that you can't hear shit.
One of the best live concerts I've ever been to was in Verona Arena, seeing Leonard Cohen in 2012ish with my dad. Seeing a man in his late 70s play a nearly 4 hour show, with a great setlist, a band that was incredibly tight, and looked incredibly happy to be doing music was just an amazing experience overall.