A 2,000-year-old building where Roman gladiators in Pompeii trained for combat has opened to the public eight years after its collapse following rainfall.
The Pompeii archaeological site said the public can tour the Schola Armaturarum on Thursdays.
Experts will explain their painstaking restoration of frescoes that decorated the site where gladiators trained before combat in the ancient Roman city.
Its opening was hailed by Italy's culture ministry as the "symbolic place of Pompeii's rebirth," following years of dismaying news that various ruins had crumbled amid modern-day neglect of the sprawling, once-flourishing city that was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.
The building, which has been previously excavated some 100 years ago, had also suffered heavy damage from World War II Allied bombing. A few years later, reinforced concrete was used to build a protective cover.
A park statement said prosecutors investigating the 2010 collapse didn't pinpoint responsibility.
But it said there were several "probable" interlaced factors that were aggravated by days of heavy rain.
Those factors included probable malfunction of a drainage system, the weight of the postwar addition of cement and iron and "lack of a planned system of monitoring and maintenance."
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