For €40 ($65), it was a steal: the opportunity to see the world’s first open-air amphitheatre, with ruined columns, stone steps and statues tucked into a hill in the north-eastern Italian countryside.

But tourists found themselves short-changed when the artefact was revealed to not have been built before 393AD, but in the early 2000s.

Now, Franco Malosso von Rosenfranz, the curator of the Berico Maritime Amphitheatre near the north-eastern city of Vicenza, has been jailed after he levelled a hill, built the fake archaeological site on top and charged tourists €40 to visit the site.

The 69-year-old, a self-described “philanthropist, entrepreneur and orchestra conductor”, was sentenced to two years and four months for forging artworks, producing artefacts without authorisation and violating building codes.

He claimed to have discovered the area and historical artefacts dating back to the Neolithic, Greek and Roman eras.

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In promotional material, he called the amphitheatre “the oldest and largest, among the most spectacular in the world” local reports said.

The site had fooled many, with the local government even including it in a tourism promotion guide and app that were funded by the EU, Italian news outlet Corriere della Sera previously reported.

But in 2016, the Italian Carabinieri conducted an investigation into the site, authorised by the Vicenza prosecutor’s office.

Archaeologists analysed the structure and satellite images, which showed the recent change in landscape.

They concluded there was no ancient structure and that the site had been built recently with artificially aged blocks of modern stones.

He constructed steps from “simply stacked or stuccoed” blocks, which he treated to create an antique effect; a freshly excavated artificial lake; plaster statues and concrete columns “made of fiberglass, papier-mâché, or similar elements”, according to Italian media.

Malosso told tourists that a range of historical figures had visited the amphitheatre, claiming that Julius Caesar had passed through the site on his return from Egypt with Cleopatra.

He also claimed he had unearthed the site in the garden of a large house after a landslide in 2005 uncovered the lost theatre.

According to Malosso, the amphitheatre was the original landing site of the first Venetians, an ancient church and even the place Juliet Capulet lived as a teenager – despite William Shakespeare setting the play in Verona.

When the crime was first uncovered, Jacopo Bulgarini D’Elci, Vicenza’s deputy mayor, described it as “one of the most incredible hoaxes since Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds”.

The municipality of Arcugnano is seeking €560,000 in damages, while Malosso was also handed a €3,000 court fine and ordered to clear the area.

The Telegraph, London