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A magnificent theater suddenly comes into view on your left as you approach the town of Sutri, which is perched on a high promontory 30 miles north of Rome. Unlike most hillside structures, which simply make use of the natural slope, Sutri’s theater was entirely scooped out of the soft volcanic tuff, like a pumpkin.
Just who built this impressive structure, and when, remains unclear. Until recently, it was assumed that the theater dates to the fifth or fourth century B.C., when this part of Italy was controlled by the Etruscans.
The structure, indeed, has tantalizing Etruscan elements. Not far from the Sutri theater, for example, the Etruscans constructed burial chambers and altars by hollowing them out of the soft rock. And some of the theater’s doorways are capped by T-shaped openings that once held wooden cross beams—a typically Etruscan design. (Leather curtains were likely suspended from the beams.)
Today, however, most archaeologists attribute the theater’s construction to the Romans, who conquered Sutri, along with most of Etruria, in the late fourth century B.C. As is often the case in the clash of civilizations, the conquerors find that they, paradoxically, are also the conquered—and the Romans who came to live in the former Etruscan cities began to take on Etruscan ways, a fusion of cultures that may account for the architecture of Sutri’s theater.
The theater was probably built during the prosperous reign of Augustus (63 B.C.–14 A.D.), when money would have been more readily available for ambitious building projects outside of Rome. (Rome didn’t even have its own theater until 50 B.C.) Roman 063engineers would have employed local Etruscan artisans, who then would have incorporated traditional Etruscan designs into the new theater.
By the early 19th century A.D., Sutri’s theater had disappeared into the hillside. Its lower section was entirely filled with earth and its upper tiers were covered by fields belonging to the wealthy Savelli family of Rome. The Savellis financed the first excavations of the theater from 1835 to 1838. Digging continued until the 1920s, when the lower levels of the cavea (the spectators’ section) were exposed. The theater’s arena, archaeologists learned, was an impressive oval space roughly 50 yards wide and 40 yards deep.
In the 1930s archaeologists discovered a decorative frieze that once encircled the top of the cavea. A series of semi-columns surmounted by a cornice appear on the frieze, and actual column fragments were uncovered in the ruins. Scholars hypothesize that a freestanding row of columns once topped a side of the building, much as shown on the frieze.
Spectators entered the theater through entrances at either end of the building’s long axis. From each of the two entrances a pair of interior stairways led up to a section of three levels of bleachers, entirely hewn out of the tuff, separated by aisles.
The Sutri theater also offered special facilities for important members of the audience. On the lowest tier of seats was a 19- by 16-foot viewing stand, presumably where spectators could stretch their legs without missing any of the action. And the theater had the ancient equivalent of our modern luxury boxes: Eight seats, set spaciously in 6-foot-wide semi-circular recesses, were placed at regular intervals around the middle tier of the arena.
Just a few steps from the theater’s beautifully carved gate on the Via Cassia—the Roman road that threaded its way north of Rome through the volcanic hills of Latium to the cities of Etruria—lies Sutri’s ancient necropolis. More than 60 distinctly Etruscan, house-like tombs were carved out of rock during the period when Sutri was ruled by the Romans. Some of these tombs were badly damaged when local farmers used them as pig sties in later centuries.
Adjacent to the theater and necropolis along the Via Cassia is a Mithraic temple, whose two chambers are also hollowed out of tuff. (Mithraism, a mystery cult thought to have originated in ancient Persia, arose contemporaneously with early Christianity.) During the sixth or seventh centuries A.D., the temple became a Christian church dedicated to the Madonna del Parto (Mary, the Assistor at Births)—yet another example of the cultural transformations that occurred again and again in Sutri over the centuries.
A magnificent theater suddenly comes into view on your left as you approach the town of Sutri, which is perched on a high promontory 30 miles north of Rome. Unlike most hillside structures, which simply make use of the natural slope, Sutri’s theater was entirely scooped out of the soft volcanic tuff, like a pumpkin.
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