Roman Theatre Audio Guide

Roman Theatre: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Teatro Romano

   Welcome to the Roman theater of Trieste, which sits at the foot of San Giusto Hill, right in the middle of the city on the edge of the old town. You are standing on Via del Teatro Romano, and this is the street from which the monument is best seen. A quick note on what this guide covers. The sources I have are strong on the theater's history, its rediscovery and its statues. They say little about opening hours, tickets or visitor facilities, so I will not guess at those. One practical point is clear: to protect the ancient fabric, visitors are generally not allowed onto the orchestra or the historic seating steps. The view from the street is close enough to pick out the architectural details, so you lose very little. The story here is the surprise of it all. A whole Roman theater spent centuries hidden among ordinary houses, and then came back into view. Let's start with how it was lost.

2. 02

   A Theater by the Sea

   When this theater was built, it stood outside the city walls of Roman Tergeste, on the shore. The sea has since pulled back, so today you are looking at a seaside theater that no longer has a beach. The building follows the classic Roman plan. A semicircular seating area, called the cavea, is set into the hillside, and in front of it lies the flat half-circle of the orchestra. The municipal museums of Trieste give its width as just under 65 meters, and they estimate it could hold about 3,500 people. You may come across a larger figure of 6,000 spectators in popular travel writing. I would trust the municipal estimate, since it comes from the city's own civic museums. Dating is also debated. One account places the construction at the end of the first century before the Christian era, with an enlargement early in the second century of the Christian era. The municipal museums point to recent studies that put the building phase in the first half of the first century of the Christian era, with work linked to the reign of Nero. Scholars are still weighing the evidence, so treat the exact decades as open.

3. 03

   Rena Vecia: A Theater Hidden in Plain Sight

   Here is my favorite part of the story. For centuries this theater was never really forgotten. It was simply built over. Houses rose on and around the ruins, and the district became known as Rena vecia, meaning old Rena. The name comes from the word arena, and it kept alive the memory that some ancient building for spectacles had once stood here. In 1698, a writer named Ireneo della Croce drew the theater for the first time, when remains still showed among the houses of the 1500s and 1600s. Over the next two centuries, the ruins were absorbed into the new buildings. Then, in 1814, the architect Pietro Nobile identified the theater. One recent account notes that when it was finally uncovered, the shape of the theater matched his sketches with remarkable accuracy. So the discovery was less a bolt from the blue than a slow confirmation. The clues were in the street names, the old drawings and the odd curve of the neighborhood, waiting for someone to put them together.

4. 04

   Excavation, Statues and Stories

   The theater you see today is the result of excavations carried out between July 1937 and September 1938, during large-scale demolitions of part of the old town. The remains that survived were substantial enough to allow reconstruction, and consolidation and restoration work gave the building a monumental appearance again. One local historical account adds a telling detail. The rediscovery coincided with the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of the emperor Augustus, so the theater also played a role in the celebrations of that moment. The finds included statues and inscriptions. According to the municipal museums, the theater's sculptural cycle is one of the most significant examples of sculptural decoration in any theater on Italian soil. The statues drew on widely known models whose originals go back to the fourth century before the Christian era. The originals from the excavations are kept in the Lapidario Tergestino, at the Castle of San Giusto, in the Civic Museum of the Castle. Replicas can be seen from the street. As for who paid for it, the sources disagree. One account says it was probably built at the wish of Quintus Petronius Modestus, a Trieste native linked to the emperor Trajan, while other sources say he only oversaw renovations. His name appears in several inscriptions.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Take one more slow look at the curve of the seating against the hillside, and at the modern buildings pressed right up against it. They are a reminder of how the city grew over the ruins, layer by layer. If you would like to keep following the thread, you could notice how the shape of the old neighborhood still seems to echo the theater's outline. You might also wonder where the sea once reached, and picture the audience arriving near the shore. Travel writers say the warm light at sunset suits the stones, though I cannot promise what you will see on the day. And if the statues caught your imagination, the originals are waiting in the Castle of San Giusto, up the hill, where the theater's story continues.