Roman Theatre

You hear it before you understand it. A voice from the stage drifts up the stone steps and reaches you clearly, even near the top. The seats rise in front of you in a steep gray curve. You are sitting in a Roman theatre that has held the sound of human voices for more than eighteen hundred years. The air smells of warm dust and old stone.

This theatre stands in the older part of Amman, below the hills of the city center. It was built in the second century, when Rome ruled here and the city was called Philadelphia. That name is far older than the one in America. It meant the city of brotherly love, and it belonged to Amman long before. It was once part of a league of Roman cities spread across the region.

The builders cut the theatre into the side of a hill. This was clever work. The slope gave them a natural frame for the rows of seats, and it saved them from raising the whole structure from the ground. The curve you sit in was carved to fit the land itself. Builders across the Roman world used this same trick wherever a hill would allow it.

Look at the direction it faces. The seats look toward the north. This was not by chance. Facing north kept the sun out of the eyes of the crowd through the long afternoons of a performance. The people who designed it thought about comfort, about heat, about light. Even the angle of the seats was chosen with the sun and the seasons in mind.

The theatre could hold around six thousand people. Picture that crowd. Three broad tiers of seating climb the hill. The lowest rows were for the rulers and the honored guests. The highest rows, far from the stage, were for ordinary people. Where you sit now once marked your place in the order of the city. The closest seats, cut from finer stone, still show where the important guests once sat.

Try this. If a friend stands at the center of the stage and speaks in a normal voice, you can hear them even high up in the seats. The shape of the theatre gathers the sound and carries it upward. There were no microphones. The stone did the work. This is why these theatres were built with such care for their curve. It is a simple test, and it never fails to surprise first-time visitors.

Climbing the steps is steep, so take it slowly. The stone is worn smooth by countless feet. Hold the rail where there is one. From the top, turn around. The view opens over the old city, the rooftops, and the hills that rise on every side, each one crowded with pale buildings. On a clear day you can pick out the white columns of the citadel on the far hill.

On either side of the stage are two small museums. One holds folk costumes, jewelry, and the woven crafts of Jordan. The other shows scenes of daily life from the recent past, with tools, dress, and mosaics. They are small and quiet, and they make a cool pause from the open seats. Both sit just steps from the seats, so they are easy to fold into your visit.

The flat open space below the theatre is a modern plaza. In Roman times this area was the busy center of the city, lined with columns and shops. A little of that survives nearby. You can still find the remains of a smaller theatre, the Odeon, used for music, and the broken arc of a public fountain. Picture the noise of trade and talk that once filled this open ground.

What makes this place unusual is that it is not only a ruin. It is still in use. Concerts and shows are held here on summer nights. The same seats that held a Roman crowd now hold a modern one. Few stages on earth have stayed in use for so long without a break. Buying a ticket to a show here means sitting where audiences sat in Roman times.

Sit for a while before you leave. The traffic hums beyond the stone. Children call to each other across the rows. The afternoon light moves slowly down the seats. It is easy, in this hollow of carved stone, to feel how little the simple act of gathering to watch and listen has changed. Pigeons settle and scatter across the empty rows.

When you finally rise to go, run your hand along the worn edge of a seat. Countless people have sat exactly where you sit, across nearly two thousand years. The voices they came to hear are long gone. The stone that carried those voices is still here, waiting for the next.