Il Teatro romano di Sessa Aurunca, brought to light and restored between 1999 and 2003, is one of the most imposing public buildings from the Roman era discovered so far in Campania. Built under the empire of Augustus, in the 1st century AD, it was renovated and expanded in the 2nd century AD, under Antoninus Pius. Due to the grandeur of the remains and the preciousness of the artifacts found, it is tangible evidence of Rome’s power and interest in Campania and Suessa in particular. The building, with walls preserved up to 20.00 meters in height, includes a cavea of 110 meters in diameter, dug into the hill and supported above by galleries, with three tiers of limestone seats that could accommodate 7,000 to 10,000 spectators. Also significant are the remains of the structure that supported the velarium, used to protect spectators from the sun, and the large stage building, 40.00 meters long and originally 24.00 meters high, equipped with three superimposed orders of 84 columns. The stage constituted a true open-air museum where the Roman artists and stonemasons used many types of marble to create architectural decorations, consisting of friezes, architraves, and capitals. The columns were made with five different types of colored marbles, coming from the Greek islands, Numidia, and Egypt, while the architraves and capitals were carved from white marble from Carrara and Athens. An extraordinary series of artifacts also includes dedicatory and commemorative inscriptions, as well as numerous fragments of sculptures that decorated the theatre, pertaining to the gallery where members of the imperial house were celebrated, such as the emperors Trajan and Hadrian, and their respective wives Plotina and Sabina; the colossal statues of Livia and Agrippina the Elder. From the sacellum in the summa cavea also come the sculptures of Matidia the Elder, Sabina, Plotina, and Matidia the Younger. Behind the stage building developed the porticus pone scaenam, for the spectators’ rest during intervals between shows. On its sides stood two basilica-plan rooms, the southern one frescoed and equipped with a nymphaeum, the northern one with a crypt and connected to the extra-urban road network, near whose entrance is a sacellum with the fresco of the Genius loci. Attached to it was built in the 3rd century AD a latrine with a tessellated floor and marble cladding walls. A short distance from the theater on the terrace west of the ancient city, near the Forum, stands the cryptoporticus, probably a public-use building overlooking an open area paved in opus spicatum, where a sacellum is hypothesized to have stood. This monument, probably for public use, due to its construction features appears to date back to the Sullan or late Sullan period. The cryptoporticus is articulated in three arms, divided into two naves separated by rows of pillars and covered by barrel vaults, illuminated by sloping windows. The walls preserve the white stucco coating with architectural moldings in relief, attributable to the early decades of the 1st century AD, on which interesting graffiti with names of poets and Virgilian verses are inscribed, suggesting also a use as a school for the building. Also near the theater, in the area of the current Porta Cappuccini, a vast suburban residential villa has recently been discovered and explored, perhaps belonging to Matidia, equipped with a pars rustica with a press room for wine production, and a pars urbana, with the residential rooms. Built in opus incertum in the 2nd century BC, renovated in opus reticulatum between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, it was again modified in the 2nd century AD before abandonment.
Information on the Roman Theatre and Cryptoporticus of Sessa Aurunca
Via Aldo Moro
81037 Sessa Aurunca (Caserta)
0823.936455 (Archaeological Office of Sessa Aurunca); 0823.972130 (Archaeological Office Mondragone)
sar-cam.mondragone@beniculturali.it
Source: MIBACT
