Agrigento: first steps of ancient theater discovered

After a little more than a year of excavations at the ancient theater of Akagras in Agrigento, in the Valley of the Temples, archaeologists have unearthed the first top tiers on which audiences sat to watch performances or debates in the 4th century B.C.

This discovery confirms the size and importance of the ancient monument, which must have measured roughly 100 meters in diameter, which had been discovered last year and of which archaeologists from theSicilian park authority and Bari Polytechnic University hope to unearth other parts to reconstruct its original structure.

Agrigento Mayor Calogero Firetto highlighted the importance of the new discoveries, which "elevate the potential of the Unesco site and regenerate the link between the hill of the Temples and the millennial city. The ancient theater tells the story of Agrigento from the Greco-Roman and late ancient periods, and reconstitutes the urban fabric with the hill of Girgenti on which the medieval and modern city stands. Agrigento is unique in that in 2020 it will be able to recount step by step the 2,600 years of history since its founding. Together with the recent exceptional discoveries of theAgora, the Roman temple and the great variety of ancient furnishings, the theater’s tiers are the concrete hope of the existence of seating blocks still submerged in the ground. The ancient theater is there and it is beautiful."

“We are halfway done,” comments Agrigento Archaeological Park director Giuseppe Parello, “and at the end of January we will conclude these excavation works that have confirmed the structure of the theater.”

The excavations were funded by the Valley of the Temples by taking advantage of the surplus of 2016 revenues. The steps were located a few centimeters below the countryside under which the Hellenistic theater “sleeps”; they are large blocks of trapezoidal shape.
In addition to the stone blocks of the cavea, the excavations unearthed some theater masks and oil lamps, typical objects related to the use of an ancient theater, and a fragment of a red-figure vase on a black background that will be studied along with the other finds in preparation for an exhibition that will be set up in the coming months.

Image: a part of the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento.

Agrigento: first steps of ancient theater discovered

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