Aspendos Theatre

Walk in through the low entrance, and the space opens above you all at once. Rows of stone seats sweep up in a wide half circle, climbing toward the sky. Behind the stage rises a tall wall of stone, almost complete. This is the theatre of Aspendos, one of the best-preserved Roman theatres found anywhere in the world.

The theatre sits about forty-five kilometers east of Antalya, near the town of Antalya. It was built in the second century, during the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. A local architect named Zenon designed it. His name is recorded in an inscription on the building itself, a rare thing to have survived so long.

What makes Aspendos unusual is how much of it remains. In most Roman theatres the stage building has long since fallen away. Here it still stands nearly to its full height, a tall screen of stone facing the seats. Because of this, the theatre keeps the closed, whole shape that its builders first intended for it.

The seats are cut in two main sections, divided by a walkway that runs around the middle. Stairways climb between the rows like the spokes of a wheel. Thousands of spectators could be seated here at one time. Find a place partway up and sit a while, as audiences have done on this same stone for some eighteen centuries.

Test the sound for yourself. The acoustics of Aspendos are well known and much studied. A voice from the stage floor, even a quiet one, carries clearly to the highest rows without any modern help at all. The builders shaped the curve of the seats and the wall behind the stage to gather the sound and lift it upward.

Look closely at the stage wall. Rows of holes mark the places where columns and decoration were once fixed in place. In Roman times this wall carried two levels of columns, statues set in niches, and a sloping wooden roof above the stage. Much of the stone framework survives, even though the marble facing is long gone.

Above the top row of seats runs a covered gallery of arches. Walk up to it and then turn around to face out. From here you see the full bowl of the theatre below you, and beyond the stage wall, the wide plain where the ancient city of Aspendos once spread across the low surrounding hills.

Aspendos was a wealthy city long before this theatre was raised. It traded in salt, in horses, and in goods carried up the river from the coast. The theatre was a sign of that wealth, a gift to the people of the city. Other ruins still lie on the hill above, waiting quietly among the dry grass and stone. Trade like that paid for the grand public buildings whose remains you can still trace today.

Among them is an aqueduct, and it is worth the short walk to see. Roman engineers carried water across the valley here using tall stone channels and two high pressure towers, forcing the water down and back up again across the low ground. Long stretches of it still stand, marching across the open fields toward the old city.

The building did not survive by accident. In the Seljuk period, centuries after Rome had gone, the theatre was reused as a caravanserai, a walled resting place along a busy trade route. Repairs from that time can still be seen in the stonework. Being kept in use, rather than left abandoned, is what saved it from ruin.

The theatre is still used today. Each year it hosts an opera and ballet festival, and singers and dancers perform on the very stage where Roman actors once stood. To sit in these seats during a performance is to use the building in exactly the way it was first meant to be used.

Come early or come late if you can manage it. By the middle of the day the pale stone holds the heat, and there is very little shade to be found among the seats. Morning light falls across the stage wall and shows its carving at its best. The crowds are thinner then too, before the tour buses arrive.

Before you leave, stand alone at the center of the stage. Speak a few quiet words and listen to them travel up and out across the empty rows. The seats rise around you, the same stone, the same curve, shaped by builders who understood sound long ago. Few places let you reach across so many centuries so simply.