Area archeologica del Teatro-Tempio Sannitico (Santuario Italico di Pietrabbondante)

On the shoulder of Monte Saraceno, nearly a thousand metres up, the Samnites built the sanctuary where their nation met: a theatre set into the slope, temples raised on high podiums, and a public house for assemblies. The complex is an important surviving expression of Samnite architecture.

Why it matters

Rome's hardest opponents in the fourth and third centuries BC were the Samnites, the mountain people of the southern Apennines, and this was their stage. The sanctuary is a major expression of Samnite architecture, distinguished by the complexity of its plan and the balance of its volumes. More than a place of worship, the sanctuary served the Sannio pentro as a national seat: it combined religious functions with the civic life of the Samnite community. The deities honoured were abstract Italic powers — Victory, Opulence, Honour — which tells you much about the people. The stone theatre within the sanctuary has few parallels among Italic monuments, making Pietrabbondante an important site for understanding the Samnite world.

What to notice

The theatre and temple were conceived as a single composition. The great theatre was built above ground rather than dug into the hill, held by a mighty substructure of polygonal masonry; the seats of the lower cavea preserve their anatomical carved backrests, worked in local stone. Within the complex, Temple B rises on a high podium with sacrificial altars and a monumental stair. Below lies the smaller Temple A, where a stretch of frieze and cornice survives; it dates to the first half of the second century BC. The broad stone table identified as the erario, or treasury, bears an Oscan inscription naming a meddix tuticus, the highest magistrate of the Samnite state. The Ministry of Culture links the official with the family of the Latin poet Ennius. The Domus Publica, the seat of the sanctuary's administration, forms part of the complex’s civic and religious architecture.

Context and history

The sanctuary grew in phases. In the fourth century BC a temple of Italic-Ionian type stood here with an adjacent oikos; its destruction levels, attributed to the Second Punic War, still contained the weapons of enemy soldiers. After the war the Samnites rebuilt on a far grander scale: between the second and early first centuries BC rose the great theatre-temple complex and the Domus Publica that form the complex. Traces of occupation in the eastern sector extend the site’s history to before the fifth century BC. One roof tile bears a Latin–Oscan bilingual inscription, an early example of the two languages appearing together on a temple covering. With the Roman conquest the sanctuary's political role ended, and the medieval borgo of Pietrabbondante grew nearby, quarrying its stones. The theatre has also acquired a modern cultural role through the Sannita Teatro Festival.