ROME -- After six years of restoration work, the archaeological site of the Eternal City’s Circo Massimo (Circus Maximus) -- one of the capital’s symbolic locations -- has been reopened, inaugurated Thursday by the city’s mayor Virginia Raggi.

 Roman mayor Raggi and her culture councillor Luca Bergamo officially reopened the archaeological site of the Circo Massimo Thursday morning, which will be accessible to Romans and tourists at varying but reasonable prices -- from three to five euros. The new entrance lies in Porta Capena Square.

 Thus, Rome has been given back one of its most symbolic sites, directly linked to the legend of the city’s origins -- the biggest ancient structure for spectacle built by humankind.

 During the inauguration ceremony, the head conservator Claudio Parisi Presicce talked about the “six years of this huge recovery operation,” and thanked “the curatorial technicians and those from the ‘Zétema’ Roman culture organization.”

 After a tour of the site, Raggi also welcomed the citizens and journalists who were gathered at the site for the opening ceremony. “It is important to have given back to the city an area that is so precious to it, that has been undergoing restoration since 2009. All of us Romans, whenever we passed by it, would ask ourselves when it would actually reopen. And today it is an honour to inaugurate it,” she said.

 “We voted yesterday all together for a political price for the entrance ticket. We thought that it was fundamental that the ticket should be accessible to everyone. I thank those who made it possible to open this archaeological site,” the mayor concluded.

 The interventions have given the monument a new legibility to its complexity, redefining the site through restoration operations to its structure, containment of its terrain, and the creation of new visitor routes with new illumination systems.

A new panoramic terrace on the southern edge of the site has been created as well, and the public spaces surrounding the site have also been cleaned up.

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