But archeologists are concerned about the impact that millions of tourists will have on the subterranean maze of tunnels and galleries as they seek to experience their very own Gladiator moment, re-enacting scenes from the Ridley Scott blockbuster starring Russell Crowe.
From next week, visitors will be able to venture into the bowels of the amphitheatre, the largest ever built by the Romans, exploring the cells and passageways in which wild animals such as lions, tigers, bears and hyenas were corralled.
They were forced into cages and raised with a system of winches and pulleys to just beneath the floor of the sand-covered arena, emerging from rope-operated trap doors to do battle with other animals or with gladiators.
The largest animals – elephants, rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses – were too big for the hoists and would have entered through a gate directly into the arena.
Tourists will be able to see the remains of a sophisticated sewerage system which provided the Colosseum's enormous crowds with dozens of drinking fountains and lavatories and even enabled the arena to be flooded for mock naval battles involving hundreds of gladiators on ships.
Roman bricks still line the floors of the dungeons and tunnels and stone stairways connect the two underground levels.
An underground passageway, which still exists, linked the Colosseum with a nearby gladiator barracks, the "ludus magnus", the remains of which are also still visible.
Gladiators – who were mostly common criminals, slaves and prisoners of war – would emerge into the arena to the applause of 50,000 spectators.
Those that were killed in combat were carried out of the amphitheatre through the Porta Libitina – the Gate of Death.
"You can imagine being a gladiator and listening to the roar of those 50,000 people coming through the floorboards – that is what is magnificent about being down here," said Darius Arya, the director of archaeology of the American Institute for Roman Culture.
"The animals would have been prepared for slaughter, or slaughtering: there were bears, boars, lions, tigers, even crocodiles. People would have been working on hoisting 20ft tall stage sets into the arena – there was more backstage pressure than for a Broadway show. The smell and the heat would have been incredible, especially in summer, and it would all have been done by candlelight."
Opening up the underground area is intended to relieve crowding at one of Italy's most popular ancient monuments – an average of 20,000 people converge on the Colosseum each day. Until now, only about 35 per cent of the vast stone-built stadium has been accessible.
The newly opened areas will be open to guided tours of a maximum of 25 people at a time.
"It is the first time people will have the chance to go down into the places where games and shows were organised," said Rossella Rea, the director of the Colosseum.
However, Dr Arya said: "It's great that these new areas are open but I'm concerned because there's going to be a lot more traffic and a lot more wear and tear.
"They need to make sure that it is not trampled on. The conservator in me asks what guarantees are there that the place will still be in good shape in five or 10 years' time."
Visitors will also be able to access, for the first time in about 40 years, the third highest of four tiers of seating, which in Roman times was reserved for poor citizens, freed slaves and foreigners.
The Colosseum was started by the emperor Vespasian in AD70 and completed 10 years later by his son, Titus, who held a 100 day inauguration festival in which 9,000 animals were killed
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Manfred Nowak says US is obliged to examine claims that military handed over Iraqi detainees knowing they might be killed
The UN's chief investigator on torture says that if leaked US files on the Iraq conflict point to clear violations of the UN convention against torture,Barack Obama's administration has a clear obligation to investigate them.
The 400,000 documents, released by the website WikiLeaks in the biggest leak in US military history, paint a disturbing picture of the relationship between US and Iraqi forces. They have fostered suspicions that US forces handed over detainees to their Iraqi counterparts knowing there was a risk they were going to be tortured or killed.
Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur, said under the conventions on human rights there is an obligation for states to criminalise every form of torture, whether directly or indirectly, and to investigate any allegations of abuse.
Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, Nowak, who has spent years investigating allegations of US participation in extraordinary rendition and the abuse of detainees held by coalition forces, said: "President Obama came to power with a moral agenda, saying: 'We don't want to be seen to be a nation responsible for major human rights violations'."
A failure to investigate credible claims of US forces' complicity in torture, Nowak suggested, would be a failure of the Obama government to recognise US obligations under international law. He said that the principle of "non-refoulement" prohibited states from transferring detainees to other countries that could pose a risk to their personal safety.
The documents, which cover the period in Iraq from 2004 onwards, have prompted claims that this principle has not been observed, according to those who have studied them.
Nowak said the US had an obligation "whenever they expel, extradite or hand over any detainees to the authorities of another state to assess whether or not these individuals are under specific risk of torture. If this assessment is not done, or authorities hand over detainees knowing there is a serious risk of them being subjected to torture, they violate article 3 of the UN convention that precludes torture."
Nowak said it would be up to the Obama administration to launch an "independent and objective" investigation with a view not only to "bring the perpetrators to justice but also to provide the victims with adequate remedy and reparation".
He admitted possible sanctions to ensure "powerful states like the United States of America" fulfilled their obligations were "extremely weak". Neither the US nor Iraq had ratified the international criminal convention that would see officials from either country brought before the international courts for war crimes.
Nowak said it was not enough for Obama's administration to suggest the alleged crimes took place before it came to power. "There is an obligation to investigate whenever there are credible allegations," Nowak said, pointing to the administration's decision to end rendition flights as proof it had recognised the need to recognise its obligations under international law and draw a line under the actions of its predecessor.
But he suggested it would ultimately be up to the US courts to determine whether US officials or soldiers had breached human rights laws. "If it is established that a particular individual is responsible for torture directly or by complicity, this person should be brought to justice in the domestic courts," Nowak said.
In Washington there is fury at the latest revelations, following an earlier massive leak of classified documents relating to Afghanistan. The Pentagon has claimed the information published by WikiLeaks will serve only to strengthen America's enemies, but is also arguing that the documents reveal nothing that is not already known.
One of the passengers had hidden the animal, which he planned to sell, in a big sports bag Photo: AP
The plane came down despite no apparent mechanical problems during an internal flight in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It has now emerged that the crash was caused by the concealed reptile escaping and causing a stampede in the cabin, throwing the aircraft off-balance.
A lone survivor apparently relayed the bizarre tale to investigators.
The crocodile survived the crash, only to be dispatched with a blow from a machete.
Danny Philemotte, the Dutch pilot and 62-year-old owner of the plane's operator, Filair, struggled in vain with the controls, with Chris Wilson, his 39-year-old First Officer from Shurdington, near Cheltenham, Glocs.
The plane was on a routine flight from the capital, Kinshasa, to the regional airport at Bandundu when the incident unfolded, on August 25.
It crashed into a house just a few hundred feet from its destination. The occupants of the property were outside at the time.
According to the inquiry report and the testimony of the only survivor, the crash happened because of a panic sparked by the escape of a crocodile hidden in a sports bag.
One of the passengers had hidden the animal, which he planned to sell, in a big sports bag, from which the reptile escaped as the plane began its descent into Bandundu.
A report of the incident said: "The terrified air hostess hurried towards the cockpit, followed by the passengers."
The plane was then sent off-balance "despite the desperate efforts of the pilot", said the report.
The plane was a Czech-made Let L-410 Turbolet, one of more than 1,100 produced as short-range transport aircraft and used mainly for passenger services.
John Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 377 pp., $29.50.
THE COVER of John Calvert’s book parades the face that launched a thousand suicide bombers. Sayyid Qutb, the major ideologue of modern, ultraviolent Islamic fundamentalism, is staring through bars, probably during his Cairo trial in April 1966, shortly before his death sentence was pronounced. Bushy eyebrows, a full, dark, graying moustache, large brown eyes, inquisitive, wary, worried. But by some accounts, he was looking forward to his martyrdom: “I have been able to discover God in a wonderful new way. I understand His path and way more clearly and perfectly than before,” he wrote to a Saudi colleague in June. He was hanged by the Nasser regime, along with two fellow Muslim Brotherhood activists, in the early morning hours of August 29.a
A recent profile of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, says that he has spent much of his time in the American detention facility at Guantánamo Bay reading Qutb. Apparently, so have many others among the fundamentalists wreaking havoc in Middle Eastern, Far Eastern and Western cities in recent decades. Qutb is the man whose books, written as he was edging toward Islamism in the late 1940s and after his “conversion” during the 1950s, explain why Muslims must wage jihad against both the “Near Enemy”—the Western-aligned and Western-influenced regimes in the Arab world—and the “Far Enemy”—meaning the West itself, especially the United States.Lawrence Wright covered Qutb's (pronounced Katoob) influence in The Looming Tower, a book I highly recommend. I got the unabridged audio version.
A LEADING Japanese statesman who helped mend relations with China in the 1980s says China's ''diplomatic shock and awe campaign'' over disputed islands has reduced the relationship to ''ground zero''.
Yoichi Funabashi, editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun, said consequences of China's aggressive response would have a larger impact in Japan than US president Richard Nixon's secret meeting with Chairman Mao in 1971.
''Japan and China now stand at ground zero, and the landscape is a bleak, vast nothingness,'' wrote Mr Funabashi, in a letter sent to dozens of high-ranking friends in China.
If China continues to undermine its own ''peaceful rise'' doctrine then ''Japan would discard its naivety, lower its expectations, acquire needed insurance and, in some cases, cut its losses'', he wrote.
In the 1980s Mr Funabashi worked to restore ties and send thousands of Chinese students on exchange programs to Japan.
Many Chinese commentators are also concerned that China's rising assertiveness is harming its relations across the region.
''The Asahi Shimbun is the best Japanese newspaper and its standpoint is neutral. This is why Funabashi's article is so shocking,'' wrote Wang Shuo, editor of one of China's leading news outlets, Caixin. Mr Wang posted Mr Funabashi's letter and his response on the Caixin website.
Tens of thousands of Chinese students took part in mass demonstrations in several cities over the weekend.
Some damaged Japanese cars and others brandished placards of racially inflammatory slogans.
The Chinese government has taken measures to contain those protests and has recently toned down its propaganda onslaught.
Chinese and Japanese diplomats are believed to be working to get their prime ministers and foreign ministers together for a peacemaking meeting on the sidelines of next week's ASEAN summit in Hanoi.
But Japanese anger appears unabated. Former prime minister Shinzo Abe this week likened China's growing territorial ambitions to those of Nazi Germany and Lebensraum - Adolf Hitler's philosophy that the German people needed more ''living space'' in which to grow.
''Perhaps the party's leaders, despite their fear of meeting the same fate as the Soviet Union, are unable to resist the call of the People's Liberation Army for a military build-up,'' Mr Abe said.
Professor Peter Drysdale, of the Australian National University, said the mainstream of Japanese politics was nevertheless working to rebuild relations between the two countries, given Japan's reliance on investments in, and exports to, China.
''The practical hardheads that understand this know that Japan is into China up to its armpits … and they are trying to sort this out,'' he said.
The dispute began in September when the Japanese coast guard arrested a Chinese fisherman in what it considers its territorial waters near the Senkaku Islands, north of Taiwan, for ''ramming'' Japanese ships.
China's diplomatic and propaganda machine went into overdrive when Japan renewed its detention of the captain of the ship. China repeatedly summoned Japan's ambassador to Beijing and implemented what the Japanese government says was an embargo on rare-earth exports from China to Japan.
Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara this week criticised Beijing's ''hysterical'' reaction to the dispute over the Senkaku Islands, which China calls the Diaoyu Islands.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said he was ''deeply shocked that a foreign minister of a country could make such remarks''.
