Diego Della Valle Gives Back to His Country
The Colosseum is one of Italy's most treasured landmarks, but it's been crumbling for centuries. Now the billionaire president and CEO of luxury group Tod's, is making history by funding its restoration
THE FIRST TIME Diego Della Valle visited Rome's Colosseum, he was 11 years old and arrived in a bus stuffed with clamoring kids from his grammar school in Casette d'Ete, a village in Italy's central Marche region. The journey, which required circumventing the rugged Apennine mountain range, took over eight hours.
"But it was like a party," the 60-year-old president and CEO of the luxury leather goods company Tod's says now, his smile softened with nostalgia. "We loved every minute of it."
Fifty years later, Della Valle has made the exact same journey in 30 minutes, this time zooming over the mountains in his private jet. "I would've taken the helicopter, which is even faster," he adds, "but I was worried about the weather."
Della Valle hops out of a shiny black Mercedes at the Colosseum's main northern entrance, once reserved exclusively for 2nd-century emperors and now closed to the 21st-century public. He's wearing a navy blazer with a linen handkerchief, a starched baby-blue shirt collar shooting up like a winged buttress over his silk paisley print scarf, tailored jeans and all-suede navy-blue Hogan sneakers. Transforming his family's small shoemaking business into the booming global brand Tod's—with investments as diverse as furniture, motorcycles and newspapers—has made Della Valle a billionaire. Of all his investments, however, the one most likely to immortalize him in Italian history books is the one in front of him today.
"The dimensions here make you feel small," the industrialist remarks, gazing up at the monument's huge travertine blocks stacked 164 feet above.
For a moment, he sounds like any one of the four million tourists who come annually to the 1,933-year-old amphitheater to gawk at it. In reality, he has put a significant amount of his company's money into saving it. In January 2011, Della Valle signed a Tod's group sponsorship contract that gave 25 million euros toward a long-awaited, desperately needed full-scale restoration of the monument. Now, two years later, with scaffolding covering a portion of the Colosseum's four-story-arched façade, he is finally witnessing his gift put into action.
"I'm someone who has had enormous luck in life and when I could give back, I did," says Della Valle. "This is a monument that not only belongs to Italy's patrimony but the entire world."
The historic structure, begun by Flavian Emperor Vespasian in AD 72 and inaugurated by his son Titus in AD 80, has been crumbling for centuries. From the Middle Ages onwards, its gilded bronze shields, painted statues and precious travertine stone were pillaged by robbers and damaged by earthquakes and fires. Recently, the monument has begun to crack and fall apart, precipitated by a noxious cocktail of increasing pollution and harsh weather patterns.
"Every once in a while we receive an 'extraordinary fund' from the government," says Pia Petrangeli, a member of the Ministry of Culture's general secretariat, who supervised the agreement with Tod's. "But it's never enough. We've never managed to do a thorough job that addressed all of the problems."
Starting with the soot-covered façade, phase one of an ambitious, full-scale restoration program is already underway. In a painstaking process that will take two-and-a-half years, only a vertical sliver consisting of 10 of the monument's total 80 arches will be worked on at a time. The travertine stone will be blasted at low pressure with purified water to reveal its original creamy golden hue. Detached fragments will be reattached and fortified with mortar and the cramp iron bars that dot the surface will be repaired. Unsightly metal rail tubing in each of the 69 ground-floor arches has been replaced by newly forged iron gates, and next, a tourist center and café will be built underground in front of the Colosseum's entrance. Lastly, in the Colosseum's cellar, where roaring animals and sword-wielding gladiators were once detained, the brick walls will be restored.
"I know a lot of brilliant entrepreneurs in Italy," says former Gucci Group CEO Domenico De Sole, who has known Della Valle for nearly two decades, "and they won't touch the [public] system with a 10-foot pole. The country is overwhelmed with debt. It's totally off the charts. Everyone talks about it, but no one does anything. The fact that someone is finally stepping in and saying, 'I'll start, I'll do it,' is amazing."
THERE ARE 5,668 archeological sites in Italy, including 30 in Rome that are considered to be of major scale and only 11 of which charge entrance fees. Though the Colosseum generated 28.8 million euros in ticket sales in 2012, it only received about 2 million euros for its annual operating costs. The balance of its income is siphoned off into a pool of money that Rome's local superintendent uses to sprinkle across the rest of the city's archeological patrimony.
Meanwhile, the government's "ordinary," or base, budgets allocated for the restoration of the country's thousands of cultural and archeological sites (not to mention libraries and archives) have been on a steady, precarious slide over the last decade, from a high of 201.1 million euros in 2004 to 55.9 million euros for 2013.
In August 2009, Rome's mayor, Gianni Alemanno, began soliciting private funding, packaged as corporate sponsorships, to address the critical situation throughout Rome. In characteristic brash style, Della Valle was the first to raise his hand and the first to point at the splashiest, most prominent structure in town.
A formal auction, however, was required. From the 20 companies that were initially interested, final bidding came down to Tod's and the budget Irish airline Ryanair RYA.DB +2.40% —which intended to wrap the monument in advertising banners. In January 2011, a contract was signed with Tod's, which stipulated non-advertising use. A gift of 25 million euros was now earmarked for a single monument—nearly half of the government's entire budget for such projects.
" I see [this donation] as an obligation. Italians who have had success and luck in life should give back to their country. "
—–Diego Della Valle