Roman Theatre and Archaeological Museum Historical Timeline

Verona has two Roman entertainment buildings and most visitors find only one. This is the theatre, for drama — older than the Arena, on the far bank, and for centuries completely invisible: a neighbourhood was built on top of it and it took one man buying those houses and pulling them down to get it back.

Chronology

1. final years of the 1st century B.C. Built into the hillside across the river from the Roman town, using the gradient to carry the tiers as Greek theatres did. That choice is why the ruin climbs rather than stands, and why so much of its substructure survived.
2. Middle Ages The building falls out of use and into ruin, and a neighbourhood grows over the remains. Being built on rather than quarried is what preserved the lower structure.
3. 1834–1844 Andrea Monga, a wealthy merchant, buys the houses standing on the site and demolishes roughly thirty of them to excavate. A private citizen, at his own expense, is the reason this theatre exists as a visitable place.
4. 1904 The municipality buys the site, and excavation by Ricci and Ghirardini through 1914 recovers the whole of the seating.
5. 1930s The orchestra is excavated and further buildings come down. The archaeological museum is moved into the convent above the theatre under Antonio Avena — the same man behind Castelvecchio’s restoration and the reassembly of the Arco dei Gavi.
6. 1948 The summer theatre festival begins, and has run continuously since. The reconstructed seating a modern audience sits on exists to serve it.
7. 1970–1971 Final restoration work on the eastern part of the orchestra.

What is missing, and why

The scaenae frons — the tall architectural backdrop that closed a Roman theatre — is almost entirely gone. It stood free and was richly faced in marble, which made it the first thing worth quarrying. What survives is the seating, the orchestra and the arched substructures: the parts too embedded in the hill to carry away.

The museum above occupies the convent of San Girolamo, which sat on the site and was kept rather than cleared. The climb up through it is part of the visit and the reason the ticket covers both.