Ancient Theatre of Sabratha
Interesting facts
- Unlike most ancient theatres, which rest against a hillside, Sabratha's stands on flat ground, so its whole seating bowl had to be raised on a massive built framework.
- The restored theatre was inaugurated in 1937 by Mussolini, who ended a tour of Libya by watching Oedipus Rex performed on its stage.
- Restorers assigned each column to its storey by height: about 5.5 metres on the lowest level, 4.9 metres in the middle and 3.65 metres at the top.
- In the central niche of the stage front, a figure of Sabratha in a turreted crown clasps hands with Rome, surrounded by helmeted soldiers.
- Another relief shows all nine Muses, with Melpomene, Muse of tragedy, at the centre holding a helmet and Hercules' club.
- Beneath the wooden stage, an 11-step staircase led down to a pit where stagehands raised and lowered scenery and actors through trapdoors.
- A drainage system carried rainwater from the seats and orchestra into a pit under the stage, with a wide overflow pipe running beneath the stage wall.
- The central royal door for leading characters is 1.95 metres wide, while the two side doors for secondary roles are only 1.37 metres.
- Inscriptions show the theatre was still in use in the mid-fourth century, before earthquakes, fire and later stone-robbing reduced it to a mound.
- Italian colonial stamps issued in March 1937 to mark Libya's new coastal road showed the theatre's restored tiers framed by columns.
Why it is worth it
Sabratha, on the Mediterranean coast of north-western Libya, was a prosperous city of Roman Proconsular Africa. Its theatre stands east of the forum close to the sea, and its stage front is one of the most astonishing sights in North Africa: a wall more than 22 metres high carrying three storeys of Corinthian columns, reddish sandstone and marble set against the sky. Built around the end of the first or beginning of the second century AD, it was the largest theatre in Roman Africa, with room for about 5,000 people.
What you see is the result of one of the most ambitious restorations ever attempted on an ancient theatre. When Italian archaeologists began digging in 1927 the building was a mound of sand and rubble. Over the following decade, working from the surviving foundations and the columns scattered around the site, they re-erected 96 columns, most of them original, on three levels, sorting them by height to decide which floor each belonged to. The lower columns are of purple-veined pavonazzo marble from Phrygia, the middle ones white marble, and the shafts vary between smooth, fluted and spiral. The restoration was finished in 1937 and inaugurated with a performance of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. Some scholars find the plain back wall unconvincing, but seen from the seats the effect is overwhelming.
Do not miss the low wall at the front of the stage. Its niches are carved with white marble reliefs that have no real equal in other Roman theatres: the Judgement of Paris, with Mercury presenting the three goddesses and the naked Graces attending Venus, Hercules with the lion skin, Victory, dancers striking castanets and a scene from pantomime. The orchestra keeps much of its original Proconnesian marble paving, and the entrances to the seats of honour end in balustrades carved with dolphins. The sandstone was originally hidden under stucco, traces of which remain. The theatre is the centrepiece of the Archaeological Site of Sabratha, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982, which spreads along the shore around the old forum.
Getting there
The theatre lies within the archaeological site on the coast at Sabratha, about 1.5 km from the modern town centre. Mitiga International Airport (MJI) in Tripoli is about 76 km to the east.
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From the encyclopaedia
The ancient theater of Sabratha is the Roman theater of the ancient city of Sabratha in Proconsular Africa, on the Mediterranean cast of northwestern Libya. The date and circumstances of its construction are undetermined, as are those of its abandonment. Archaeologists can only advance approximate hypotheses, and place its construction around the end of the first century or the beginning of the second. After centuries of abandonment, excavators rediscovered the city and its monument during the Italian occupation of Libya in the early 20th century. The excavation and restoration work carried out between 1927 and 1937 made the theater the most important monument on the Sabratha site, the largest theater in Roman Africa, and the most spectacular in the Roman world in two respects: the colonnade of its stage wall was almost completely reconstructed by a three-level anastylosis, and an exceptional series of bas-reliefs adorned the base of the stage. It could accommodate around 5,000 spectators and, in its restored state, still holds 1,500.
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