Teatro ellenistico-romano di Sarno

At the edge of Sarno, where the built town loosens towards the fields of the Foce district, a first-century-BC theatre keeps distinctive carved seating: front-row thrones in grey tuff whose armrests end in carved sphinxes and winged lions. Its carved seating preserves a distinctive feature of ancient theatre design.

Why it matters

The theatre was first built around 100 BC and extensively remodelled in the Augustan age, when its stage was rebuilt in masonry and decorated with painting. Its proedria, the seats reserved for civic dignitaries, were cut in tuff with tall relief backrests and armrests ending in a sphinx and a winged lion.

What to notice

The orchestra forms a paved horseshoe at ground level, below the surviving cavea. The lowest tiers are tuff proedria with high backs and zoomorphic armrests, a sphinx and a winged lion flanking the seats of Sarno's civic dignitaries. Behind the orchestra stood the Augustan proskenion, a masonry stage front once covered with painted decoration. The upper seating and the portico that once ringed the cavea have disappeared.

Context and history

In origin the theatre belongs to a landscape older than Rome: the countryside of the Sarno river hosted a sanctuary area at Foce dedicated to a female deity, active from the mid-fourth century BC, whose material is now in the city's archaeological museum. The building itself rose around 100 BC and was comprehensively remodelled in the Augustan period, its stage rebuilt in masonry and repainted. It emerged from centuries of burial in excavations during the 1960s, and the decorative sculptures of the front rows — the sphinx and the winged lion — were brought to light in those campaigns. The nearby sanctuary of Santa Maria della Foce, where the medieval Gualtiero III di Brienne was buried, marks the same edge-of-town landscape.