Roman Theatre

In front of you is the oldest monument Málaga displays at street level. Before there were Romans here, there were Phoenicians: around the 8th–7th centuries BC they founded Malaka, a trading port whose walls have turned up beneath the nearby Picasso Museum.

1A theatre for a Roman city

Once it was part of the Empire, the town gave itself a building to match its new status. The theatre was built under Augustus, at the start of the 1st century AD, using the slope of the hill to support the seating, as the Greeks did, and filling in with masonry where the rock ran out. It had a short life: by the late 2nd century it was barely used, and in the 3rd century it was abandoned. Tanks for salting fish – for the famous garum sauce – were later built over its ruins, followed by burials.

2Hidden in plain sight

For centuries nobody knew it was here. In 1951, work on a garden uncovered a large vaulted entrance, at first taken for a gate in the city wall. It soon became clear that the theatre carried on beneath the Casa de la Cultura, a building housing archives and libraries. Only in the 1990s was it finally decided to demolish it and excavate the whole site.

The builders of the Alcazaba reused Roman columns and capitals: you can still spot some of them in its gateways.

3What to look for

• The cavea, the semicircle of seating resting against the hill.
• The orchestra, the paved half-circle at the foot of the tiers, and the wooden stage that recreates the original.
• The Alcazaba above: Rome below, al-Andalus on top, in a single glance.