Ancient Theatre of Taormina

Taormina sits on a terrace high above the Ionian Sea on the east coast of Sicily, and its ancient theatre was built on the best seat in town: the auditorium is scooped out of the rock of a ridge so that the audience looks across the stage to the coastline and, beyond it, to the long flank of Etna. It is the second-largest ancient theatre in Sicily after Syracuse, some 109 metres across, and was once able to hold around 10,000 people.

The first theatre here was Greek, from the third century BC; walls of fine squared blocks built into the stage building, a few inscribed seats and the base of a small sanctuary on the lookout above the seating survive from it. The building as it looks today is largely Roman, remodelled and enlarged in the first half of the second century AD. Later in the imperial period it was adapted for fights with wild animals: the lowest rows were replaced by a vaulted corridor and the orchestra became an arena with an underground chamber for stage machinery. The cavea is divided into nine wedges by eight stairways and was crowned by a double arcaded gallery. Behind the stage stands a tall wall, open at the centre, with a few marble columns set back in place to suggest its former splendour.

The famous view is partly an accident of ruin. In antiquity the stage building would have blocked it; only after the stage collapsed and was absorbed into a medieval private residence did Etna and the sea appear through the gap. That is how the Grand Tour travellers knew it, overgrown and framed by the volcano, and Goethe, who came in 1787, wrote that probably no theatre audience had ever had such a scene before it. Since the 1950s the theatre has been back in use for opera, concerts and film festivals, and from the upper rows at sunset it still earns every word of praise.

Getting there

The theatre is in the old town of Taormina. The town of Giarre is about 17 km away. Reggio Calabria Airport (REG) is closest in a straight line, about 40 km away across the Strait of Messina, but the practical gateway is Catania Fontanarossa Airport (CTA), about 55 km by road, with buses to Taormina and trains to Taormina-Giardini station below the town; a cable car links the town centre with the beach at Mazzarò.