Roman Theatre and Odeon

The Roman theatre sits just off Via Vittorio Emanuele a couple of blocks west of the cathedral. It is small as Roman theatres go — capacity around seven thousand — and most of the upper tiers are missing or hidden under later buildings. The lower section is intact enough to walk among, with the lava-stone seats curving down to a small orchestra and the foundations of the stage.

The adjacent Odeon, a smaller covered theatre for poetry recitals and music, is also visible. The site is a single low-priced ticket and gives a clearer impression than most of how a Roman provincial city sat under the modern one.

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A story
The theatre is in fact Greek in origin — second century BC — but was rebuilt and faced in lava stone by the Romans. The medieval city was built directly on top, and the seats remained buried under nineteenth-century houses until the city excavated them in the twentieth century. A few of those houses still stand within the archaeological zone, half-cut-away.

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