Greek Theatre of Syracuse

Put your hand flat on the seat beside you. The stone is pale limestone, warm where the sun has reached it and cool in the shadows. It feels smooth, worn down by more than two thousand years of people sitting exactly where you are sitting now. Below you, the rows of seats curve down the hillside. Behind you, you may hear water trickling somewhere in the rock. This is the Greek Theatre of Syracuse, and almost everything around you was carved, not built.

That difference is worth a moment. Most theatres are made by stacking blocks into place. Here, the ancient builders took a natural slope of the Temenite hill and cut the seating directly into the bedrock. They removed stone instead of adding it. Look down at the rows and you can see it. The steps are part of the hill itself. There are no seams between them and the ground, and the tool marks still show in places.

To understand why a theatre on this scale stands here, picture Syracuse in its prime. Settlers from Corinth founded the city in the eighth century before Christ. Within a few hundred years, it had become one of the most powerful cities in the Greek world. It was richer and larger than many cities in Greece itself. Its rulers wanted culture to match their wealth, and drama was the most prestigious culture of all.

Here is the first surprise. A theatre already stood on this hillside in the fifth century before Christ, and one of the greatest playwrights of ancient Athens worked here. Aeschylus, often called the father of Greek tragedy, came to Syracuse at the invitation of the ruler Hieron the First. Ancient sources say he wrote a play to celebrate Hieron's new city of Aetna, on the slopes of the volcano. They also say his tragedy The Persians was performed in Syracuse. Some of the oldest drama in Western literature may have been heard on this hill.

The theatre you see today owes much of its present form to a later ruler, Hieron the Second, in the third century before Christ. Under his long reign, the theatre was enlarged into one of the biggest in the Greek world. Thousands of citizens could gather here at once. Theatre in ancient Greece was not only entertainment. Plays were part of religious festivals, and the whole city attended. A performance was a civic event, a little like a national holiday.

Now for a detail most visitors walk past. Find the wide horizontal walkway that runs across the seating, about halfway up. Along the wall of this walkway, Greek letters are carved into the stone. They are worn but still readable in good light. These inscriptions name the different seating sections. One section carries the name of Zeus Olympios. Others carry the names of Hieron the Second himself, his wife Philistis, and his daughter-in-law Nereis. The royal family put their names on the seats, so that every spectator knew whose city this was.

Next, look down at the flat area at the bottom of the seating. This is the orchestra, from a Greek word for the dancing place. In Greek drama, the chorus moved and sang here. Beyond it lay the stage buildings, which have almost entirely disappeared. What remains are cuttings and channels in the rock. Archaeologists believe some of these grooves held stage machinery and painted scenery. You are looking at the footprint of an ancient backstage.

When Rome took Syracuse in the third century before Christ, the theatre did not fall silent. The Romans changed it to suit their own tastes. They altered the stage area and the orchestra for different kinds of shows. Roman audiences preferred spectacle to tragedy, and the building was adapted over the following centuries. So the stone around you holds more than one culture. It is a Greek theatre with Roman changes cut into it.

Here is the second surprise, and it is a sad one. If the seating looks shorter at the top than you might expect, there is a reason. In the sixteenth century, when the Spanish ruled Sicily, builders took stone from the upper parts of the theatre. They carried the blocks down to the island of Ortigia, the old heart of Syracuse, to strengthen its fortifications. Part of this theatre now sits inside city walls a few kilometres away.

Turn around now and climb toward the top of the seating. In the rock face above the theatre is a large artificial cave, known as the Nymphaeum. A nymphaeum was a shrine to water spirits. Water still runs into this grotto, fed by an ancient aqueduct, and that is the trickling sound you may have heard at the beginning. Nearby, a path known as the Street of Tombs climbs the hill. Its walls are full of small niches and openings cut into the rock, used for burials and offerings in later centuries.

The story of this theatre did not end with Greece or Rome. In 1914, Greek tragedy returned to these stones. A performance of Agamemnon by Aeschylus was staged here, the same playwright who may have worked here in ancient times. Since then, classical plays have been performed in this theatre in many seasons. Modern audiences sit on the ancient seats, often on temporary wooden covers, and watch the same stories that Syracusans watched long ago.

The theatre is part of a wider archaeological park, and it is worth walking further. A short distance away is an old stone quarry, now a garden of citrus trees and tall rock walls. There you will find the cave called the Ear of Dionysius, a tall, curved opening in the rock with remarkable echoes. Not far away are the remains of a Roman amphitheatre and the long base of a great altar from the time of Hieron the Second. Together, they show the Greek and Roman city side by side.

Before you leave, sit down once more and look out past the stage. Imagine the hillside full of people, the chorus moving below, and a single actor's voice carrying up the rows. Listen to the sounds of today — birds, voices of other visitors, the water in the rock. As you walk away, run your fingers along the edge of a seat one last time. Other hands touched this same stone over many centuries, and now yours have too.