The Teatro Olimpico is the oldest surviving indoor theatre in the world, designed by Palladio in the last years of his life and completed after his death by his student Vincenzo Scamozzi. It opened in 1585 with a performance of Sophocles's Oedipus Rex — the same play the Olimpici academy had chosen for its inaugural production. The theatre seats around 400 people and is still used for performances.
The interior is astonishing: a semicircular auditorium modelled on ancient Roman theatres, with tiers of stone seating and a horseshoe of statues watching from the colonnade above. The stage itself is backed by the extraordinary scaenae frons — a three-dimensional architectural facade through whose five doorways the permanent trompe-l'oeil set recedes. Plan at least an hour and do not miss this for the Basilica; the Teatro Olimpico is the more extraordinary space and the better preserved.