Photos

The Roman Theatre is in Art of the Cartapesta Street.

Together with the Amphitheater of which I showed at Roman Amphitheatre it represents the main attestation of the roman phase of Lecce (two theatres in one town!), unfortunately it is in abandon state.
The theatre is surrounded by an iron fence and only through it I was able to shoot this photo.

Hidden by century-old stratification, the theatre of the roman Lupiae , was discovered by chance in 1929 at five meter’s depth in the area between the gardens of the Romano and Arpe Palaces, during some work of private building. The excavation carried out in 1929 and 1938 allowed to discover only one part of the monumental structure and of the relevant sculptures.

Along with the close-by amphitheatre the building represents and important element to understand the ancient urban tissue and it is an evidence of the importance of Lecce in the Roman age, particularly preferred by the Emperor Augustus, who stayed here coming back from Epirus after the murder of Julius Cesar (44 b.C.). Dating back to the Augustan Age, the original theatre could host up to 6000 spectators and it is smaller only than the other one in the same city and those in Naples and Benevento. Twelve rows of steps of the cavea i.e. the steps for the public, the orchestra and the stage are the remains of the theatre. Partially excavated in the rock bank, with a difference in level of about three meters and divided into six wedge-shaped stones alternated by five radial small stairs, the cavea’s diameter was of 75,20 meters and should have been closed by marmoreal columns in the higher part. In the lower part bordered by a small wall (balteus) there were three terraces (proedria) destined to the wooden stalls reserved to authorities. The semicircular zone of the orchestra where you gained access from two lateral barrel vaulted entrances, has a diameter of 13,20 meters and its floor was covered by large calcareous slabs. The pulpitum (mt. 31,8 x 6,15) is what remains of the scena. It was excavated in the rock bank and on its surface are visible openings destined to the wooden platform of the stage usually raised to make the acoustics better. It was laterally linked with the two basilicas and surrounded by three doors of the frontescena, the monumental structure irremediably got lost, but hypothetically rebuilt by scholars according to the structural elements and sculpturals find available. The front of the stage should have been 20 mt. high, divided into three orders with exedras and niches where marble statues of refined quality were seated, some of them still visible today even if in a fragmentary state and kept at Provincial Museum Sigismondo Castromediano.

Realized according to a precise iconographic plan in compliance with the imperial propaganda ideology, these sculptures represent different subjects, resulting sometimes as copies of renown original Greek works of IV – V century b.C.. Among them: the loricated torso of the statue of Augustus for the presence on the cuirass of the cart driven by the sun rising from the waves above marine monsters transporting the Nereids with the weapons of Achilles, the medallion with the head of Athena, two male heads one of which of Asclepio, the statue headless and partially without limbs of Athena, Artemis, Heracles, Ares, of the wounded Amazon and of the Dorifor of Policlet.

In the ws a map of the theatre.

Hope you'll like it.