One of the world's most famous historical buildings was set on fire Thursday.

Danish artist Thyra Hilden and Argentinean Pio Diaz lit Rome's Colosseum on fire in the virtual sense not the literal sense in a dramatic art show aimed at stimulating debate on the fragility of Europe's cultural heritage.

Denmark-based Hilden and Diaz are bringing their City on Fire project to the Italian capital following several years of preparation, and after virtually burning several other monuments and buildings across Europe.

Virtually setting cultural symbols on fire with video projections, they seek to encourage dialogue and awareness about European heritage sites, and highlight the fragility of some of the continent's oldest monuments.

Pio Diaz said, "We wanted something to symbolize destruction and creation at once and interpretation, I mean misinterpretation, also we wanted to question whether something should exist or not and what the heritage means to us."

Creating the flames inside the historical building had been demanding of the couple, said Hilden, but added that they had not allowed the technicalities to distract them from the main purpose of the installation.

Thyra Hilden said, "As far as I know it's half a kilometer just to walk around the building so to set it on fire was a really, really huge effort but to us all the technical things are not important, we want to focus mainly and only on the content and the expression and why we want to do it."

The video-installation is being displayed at the Colosseum through Sunday and is freely visible to all passers-by.