Odeon of Herodes Atticus

Stand still for a moment and listen. Below you, the noise of Athens drops away into a bowl of pale stone. Rows of marble seats curve down toward a flat stage, and behind it rises a tall wall of golden-brown stone, pierced by rows of arched windows. In the afternoon the light comes through those arches and lands on the seats in long bright bands. This is the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, cut into the southwest slope of the Acropolis.

Athenians usually call it simply the Herodion. The word odeon comes from the Greek for song. An odeon was a theatre built mainly for music, recitals, and spoken performance. Unlike the open theatres of earlier Greece, an odeon was usually roofed, so voices and instruments carried clearly. That is the first surprise of this place. The bowl you see open to the sky was almost certainly covered once, and ancient writers describe a roof of cedar wood.

The theatre is not from the age of Pericles or the Parthenon. It belongs to a much later Athens, a city inside the Roman Empire. It was built in the second century, in the 160s, centuries after the temples above it. By then Athens was no longer a political power. It was something else, a university town for the Roman world, a place where wealthy families sent their sons to study philosophy and rhetoric. This building was made for that audience.

The man behind it was Herodes Atticus. He was an Athenian by birth, a Roman senator by career, and one of the richest men of his time. He was also a famous teacher of public speaking. He spent his fortune on buildings across Greece. Here in Athens, he also paid to rebuild the Panathenaic Stadium in marble. Giving such gifts to a city was a way to win honour, and Herodes gave on a grand scale.

But this gift carried grief. Herodes dedicated the odeon to the memory of his wife, Regilla, a Roman noblewoman from a powerful family. She died young, and her death was surrounded by dark accusations. Her brother charged Herodes with responsibility, though he was cleared in Rome. Historians still debate what really happened. So this theatre of music is also a memorial, built by a man with a complicated reputation.

Now look at the great wall behind the stage. In a Roman theatre this was the stage building, the backdrop for every performance. Notice how it rises in several levels, with arches stacked above arches. Once it was faced with marble and decorated with statues in its niches. Most of that dressing is gone. What remains is the structural stone, warm in colour, and it shows clearly how Roman builders liked to work, with arches, mass, and height.

The theatre did not stay whole for long. In the third century, a raiding people called the Heruli swept into Athens in 267 and burned large parts of the city. The odeon was badly damaged, and its roof was lost. Over the following centuries the ruin was absorbed into the city's defences and into later buildings. For a long time this place was not a theatre at all. It was simply stone on a hillside.

Here is the second surprise. The seats you are looking at are not, for the most part, Roman. In the 1950s the seating area and the orchestra floor were restored with new marble. The aim was practical as well as historical. The restorers wanted the building to work again as a living stage. So when you see clean, regular rows of white stone, you are seeing modern restoration set inside an ancient frame.

And it did come back to life. Since the 1950s the odeon has been a main home of the Athens Festival, the city's great summer season of theatre, music, and dance. On summer nights the seats fill with thousands of people. Greek tragedies are performed here, along with opera, ballet, and concerts. The Acropolis rises behind the audience, lit up against the dark sky. Few stages anywhere sit inside a setting like this.

Many famous performers have stood on this stage. The Greek-born soprano Maria Callas sang here in 1957, in a concert that is still remembered in Athens. In 1993 the composer Yanni recorded a concert here that reached a huge international audience on television and video. For many people outside Greece, that recording was their first image of this theatre at night, glowing under the Acropolis.

Notice the flat area at the bottom of the bowl. This is the orchestra. Look at its paving, laid in a pattern of pale and dark marble. In older Greek theatres the orchestra was a full circle where the chorus danced. Here it is a half circle, a Roman shape. Small details like this show you how the Romans adapted Greek theatre design to their own taste.

It helps to know what lies around you. Just to the east, a long line of arches once formed the Stoa of Eumenes, a covered walkway where theatregoers could shelter from sun or rain. Beyond it lies the Theatre of Dionysus, much older, where the great plays of classical Athens were first performed. Walk from one to the other and you move across many centuries of stagecraft in a few minutes.

Usually you cannot walk down into the seats. Outside of performances, most visitors see the odeon from above, along the path that climbs toward the Acropolis. That view is a gift in itself. From up here you see the whole plan at once, the curve of the seats, the half circle of the orchestra, and the tall wall closing the scene.

Before you move on, look once more at the arches in the stage wall. Notice how the light passes through them and falls on the marble below. Listen to the voices of other visitors, carried softly across the bowl. Even empty, this place was built for sound. And on a summer evening, not long from now, it will fill again with music, as it did for Regilla's memory long ago.