Theatre of Marcellus

The draw

It is a Roman theatre with a Renaissance palace built into the top of it, and people live in the palace. Two tiers of Augustan arcades carry a sixteenth-century residence designed by Baldassare Peruzzi for the Orsini, and the windows in it are somebody's windows. Rome is full of buildings reused across two thousand years, but this is the one where you can see all the layers at once from the pavement, and it costs nothing.

The friction

You cannot go in, and the Sovrintendenza says so plainly — visibile solo dall'esterno. The upper floors are private flats. What is open is the archaeological area at the base, which takes about twenty-five minutes and has no interior, no ticket desk and no exhibition.

The tactic

Come down to the lower level rather than looking from the road. Most people photograph it from Via del Teatro di Marcello above, which flattens it; the walkway at the excavated level puts you at the foot of the arcades and makes the stack legible. Pair it with the three columns of the Temple of Apollo Sosianus standing immediately beside it, and with the Capitoline a few minutes uphill.

Skip it if you:

• Expect to go inside. You cannot. The Sovrintendenza says visibile solo dall'esterno, and the upper floors are somebody's flats.
• Have already done the Colosseum and want more of the same. This is the same idea ninety years earlier and a third of the size, with no interior and no arena floor.
• Cannot manage steps. The excavated level is several metres below the road and is reached by stairs; the view from the pavement above is the alternative.
• Are short of time in central Rome. It is twenty-five minutes of looking at an outside, on a road you will probably walk down anyway.

People live here. The upper floors are private homes, and the single most useful courtesy at this monument is to remember that photographing the facade means photographing somebody's windows. Do not use the entryways, and do not try to get in.

Stay off the fragments. The excavated area has ancient architectural blocks laid out at ground level; they are unroped in places and they are not seating.

It is free, and that is the official position. Anyone selling you entry to the Theatre of Marcellus is selling you a street you can walk down.

Hours and admission

Open daily, and free. The Sovrintendenza Capitolina publishes ingresso gratuito for both seasons:

• Summer time (ora legale): 09.00-19.00
• Winter time (ora solare): 09.00-18.00
• Closed 1 May

What you can and cannot see

You cannot go inside the building. The Sovrintendenza states that the theatre is visibile solo dall'esterno — visible only from the outside. The upper storeys are private apartments and there is no public interior, no auditorium to walk into and no museum.

What is open is the archaeological area at the base, reached by steps down from the modern street. You walk along the foot of the arcades, past the fallen architectural fragments laid out on the ground, with the three columns of the Temple of Apollo Sosianus at the eastern end.

There is no ticket desk and nothing to book. Allow about twenty-five minutes.

Summer concerts

Wikipedia notes that the area around the theatre has been used as a venue for summer concerts. That is not a Sovrintendenza programme and is not part of the free daytime access described above.

Late afternoon, for the travertine. The arcades face roughly west-north-west across the excavated area, so the low sun comes straight down them and the curve of the facade reads properly. In the middle of the day the whole front is flat and grey.

It closes at 18.00 in winter and 19.00 in summer, so in the short season the good light and the closing time arrive together — aim for the hour before the gate shuts. Because it is free and has no queue, it is also one of the few central Roman sites that is pleasant at 09.00, when the coach groups are at the Colosseum.