Rome, 20^th January 2020.

2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of diplomatic relations between Italy and China. In order to celebrate this anniversary, 2020 will be the Year of Culture and Tourism Italy-China. The monuments identified to symbolise the cultural identity of the two nations are the Colosseum in Rome and the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, side by side in the logo of the initiative.

The Colosseum, acclaimed by TripAdvisor as the most booked and most popular monument in the world in 2019 and visited by more than 7 million five hundred thousand tourists last year, in view of this event has paid special attention to the Chinese public.

The website, launched online in December 2018, can now also be consulted in Chinese and is updated daily to keep visitors informed about activities, events, services as well as the heritage of the Park.

On Colosseum Square, around the excavation site of the future Fori Imperiali Metro C station, an installation over 200 metres long provides, also in Chinese, news about tickets, services, and timetables as well as educational information on the history of the Colosseum and the Square.

Inside the monument the panels of the permanent exhibition “Il Colosseo si racconta”, located in the second level of the monument, are in three languages, including Mandarin Chinese.

The Chinese public can now organise their visit to the Colosseum by booking online or onsite their ticket using the platform Alipay, and once they enter the Colosseum, they are welcomed by hot water dispensers, according to the common practice of Chinese people.

The Colosseum is a World Heritage Site and it is our duty that the whole world feels represented by it – says Alfonsina Russo, Director of the Parco archeologico del Colosseo -. Thanks to our commitment, in 2019 the Parco archeologico del Colosseo obtained the Welcome Chinese certification for the quality of services offered to the Chinese public. In order to maintain the recognition and to inform our public, we publish our main activities and initiatives on WeChat and on Weibo. It will thus be possible – concludes the Director – to encourage a conscious and informed visit by Chinese tourists who will choose the Colosseum as an important stage of their visit to Italy and which we hope will be more and more numerous.