Roman Theatre

Lean over and look at the ruins in front of you. Almost two thousand years ago, on this very slope, the people of Olisipo, Roman Lisbon, sat watching comedies and tragedies with the river as a backdrop.

1A theatre in the hillside

The Romans used the natural slope to support the seating, as they did in so many cities across the Empire. The theatre was built in the time of the emperor Augustus, when Olisipo was a prosperous town that official propaganda called Felicitas Iulia.

An inscription found here records that, around the year 57, a certain Caius Heius Primus, a priest of the imperial cult, paid for the renovation of the stage, the orchestra and the decoration, in honour of Nero. Curiously, the emperor's name was not chiselled off after his fall, as happened in so many other places.

2Rediscovered by chance

As the Roman city declined, the theatre was buried under earth and houses. It reappeared in 1798, when foundations were being dug for new buildings during the post-earthquake reconstruction. The architect Francesco Saverio Fabri drew what he saw, but the ruins were covered over again. Excavations only resumed in the twentieth century, and today the site is one of the branches of the Museu de Lisboa.

Fabri's drawings, published in 1815, show the stage wall almost intact: a record of what was lost afterwards.

3What to look out for

• The curve of the seating: follow the semicircle and work out where the audience was looking.
• The proscenium wall, the front of the stage.
• The slope of the street: it is the same hillside the Roman builders used.