Student Blog: Vacation With A Side Of Theater

It wouldn’t be a family trip if I didn’t manage to sneak in a little theater along the way! My family and I traveled to Italy recently, exploring Venice, Florence, and Rome over the course of ten days. Rome especially is full of incredible history, and of course I zeroed in on all the music/theater history that I could find.

Our hotel was a few minutes walk from the ruins of the Theatre of Marcellus, an open-air theater built during the final years of the Roman Republic. It was the largest theater in ancient Rome, with a seating capacity of over 17 thousand. The largest theater on Broadway, the Gershwin, doesn’t even seat two thousand. 

Over the years, it’s been used for non-theater purposes, such as a fortress, a quarry, and currently, residential apartments on the upper floors. The surrounding location is also used as a venue for concerts, and the theater itself is available for outside viewing.

We also went to Pompeii, which has three theaters! There’s a Great Pompeii Theatre, a Small Pompeii Theatre (also called Odeion), and an Amphitheatre (pictured above). The Great Theatre was most commonly used for plays, such as tragedies and comedies. These are similar to the theater we love today, with dance and music. The Great Theatre was open-air, unlike the Small Theatre, which had a roof that helped with the acoustics for musical performances. This is probably the closest to a Broadway theater, with around 1000 seats. On the other hand, the Amphitheatre was mainly used for competitions and gladiator fights.

It was really cool to see all these ancient theaters, and all the history of Ancient Rome. We toured the Colosseum, which is technically a theater as well. It’s an elliptical amphitheater in the center of Rome, and it’s the largest standing amphitheater in the world. It was used for gladiator contests, animal hunts, and battle re-enactments. However, in the early medieval area, they stopped using it for entertainment. Now, visitors can just walk around and admire it from over 150 feet from the ground.

Searching for theaters definitely added a fun element to our vacation! If you’re a theater kid, Italy is the place to go.