Rome mayor: Colosseum device a false alarm

ROME -- A suspicious device that forced the evacuation of the Colosseum on Sunday turned out to be a false alarm, Rome's mayor said.

The Colosseum was evacuated about an hour before the site was scheduled to close after tourists saw a suspicious device inside.

"It's a false alarm, a joke in bad taste," Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno told Sky News 24. "It seemed like it could be a bomb, but in reality it could not explode."

Alemanno said the Colosseum would open as usual on Monday.

A Carabinieri bomb squad detonated the device, which turned out to be a tin can half filled with paint thinner, with two electrical wires running from a 9-volt battery, the news agency ANSA said.