Ancient Theatre of Fourvière

Put your hand on the stone beneath you. It is cool, slightly rough, and worn smooth in places by two thousand years of weather and visitors. Below, the curved rows of seats fall away down the hillside like ripples in a pond. Beyond them, the rooftops of Lyon spread out in shades of terracotta and grey. On a quiet morning you can hear birds in the trees, and the faint hum of the city rising from the river valley far below.

You are sitting on Fourvière Hill, inside the oldest Roman theatre in France. This slope has watched over the city for a very long time. In 43 BCE, a Roman general named Lucius Munatius Plancus founded a colony here and called it Lugdunum. The hilltop made sense. It looked down on the meeting point of two rivers, the Rhône and the Saône. It was high, dry and easy to defend. From this ridge, Rome would govern a large part of Gaul.

The theatre came soon after. It was built around 15 BCE, during the reign of Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Notice how the seating does not stand on its own. It rests directly against the hillside, using the natural slope as its foundation. The Romans often did this when the land allowed. It saved stone and labour, and it gave every spectator a clear line of sight down to the stage. Later, in the second century, the theatre was enlarged.

At its largest, this theatre could hold around ten thousand people. Try to picture that. Every curved row around you filled with spectators in wool tunics and cloaks. Merchants, soldiers, officials and families, sorted by rank. The most important citizens sat closest to the stage. Ordinary people climbed higher. The noise before a performance must have been enormous. Vendors sold food, friends shouted across the rows, and the whole hillside became a single crowd.

Now look down at the flat half-circle at the bottom of the seating. This is the orchestra. In Greek theatres, it was a space for the chorus to dance. In Roman theatres, it often held seats of honour for the local elite. Here at Fourvière, fragments of coloured marble paving survive on this floor. If you walk down, look closely at the stones. You can still see that this was once a polished, expensive surface, meant to impress.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Just in front of the stage, there is a long, narrow trench cut into the ground. This held the curtain. Roman theatres did not raise their curtain at the start of a play. They lowered it. The curtain sank down into this slot, and the performance began. At the end, it rose back up from the ground. It is a small piece of stage machinery, but it tells you how sophisticated these shows really were.

Behind the stage, imagine a tall wall rising several storeys high, decorated with columns, niches and statues. That wall is mostly gone now. Only its foundations and a few column bases remain. But it once closed off the view and reflected sound back toward the audience. Without it, the theatre feels open and airy. With it, the space would have felt enclosed, grand and loud, more like a building than the hillside you see today.

Turn your head to the side, and you will see a second, smaller semicircle of seats. This is the Odeon. It was a more intimate venue, designed for music, poetry readings and public speeches. It held only a few thousand people. Having a large theatre and a smaller odeon side by side was rare in the Roman world. It tells you something about Lugdunum. This was not a provincial outpost. It was one of the most important cities in Roman Gaul.

That importance had a personal side too. The emperor Claudius was born in Lugdunum, in 10 BCE. Later, as emperor, he gave a famous speech in Rome arguing that leading men from Gaul should be allowed to sit in the Roman Senate. That speech was engraved on a large bronze tablet. Fragments of it were found in Lyon in the sixteenth century. Today you can see the Claudian Tablet in the museum built into the hillside right beside you.

After the Roman Empire declined, the theatre slowly disappeared. Its stones were taken for new buildings. Soil and vegetation covered the seats. For centuries, people lived and farmed on top of it, with only scattered traces visible. Serious excavation began in the 1930s, and archaeologists gradually uncovered the seating, the orchestra and the stage. Much of what you see today is a careful mix of original Roman stone and modern restoration, so the shape can be read clearly.

And here is the second surprise. This theatre is still a working stage. Every summer, since the years just after the Second World War, Lyon has held a festival here called Les Nuits de Fourvière, the Nights of Fourvière. Concerts, dance, theatre and circus fill these ancient rows on warm evenings. Thousands of people sit on cushions where Roman audiences sat. When the sun goes down and the stage lights come up, the hillside fills with sound again.

The neighbourhood around you adds to the story. Above, on the crest of the hill, stands the white Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, built in the late nineteenth century. Below, the narrow streets of Vieux Lyon, the old town, run along the Saône. Together, they show how many layers this city holds. Roman, medieval, Renaissance and modern Lyon all sit on top of one another, and in 1998 this historic centre was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Before you leave, sit for one more moment in the upper rows. Look at the curve of the seats, and follow it down to the stage and out to the city beyond. The same view, more or less, greeted a Roman spectator two thousand years ago. As you walk away, listen to your footsteps on the stone steps. Notice how the sound carries. The Romans built this place to share voices and stories. In a quiet way, it still does.