Il teatro romano di Terracina

After the 1968 excavation, the investigations of the Roman theater of Terracina, although carried out episodically over a long period of time, were part of a unified program, at least as far as the objective was concerned: the redevelopment of the Piazza del Municipio, the ancient forum of the colony of Anxur. After seventeen excavation and restoration campaigns carried out by various teams — the most recent being the one writing these lines — extensive research work has recently made the monument fully accessible. This has made it possible to use the site as a venue for events, while at the same time underlining the urgency of its scientific publication. The excavation campaigns carried out in the area of the theater-portico over the past three decades have uncovered numerous findings: fragments of architectural decoration, a fair number of inscriptions, and parts of the sculptural ornamentation. The contextual reassessment of some of this material, along with the analysis of the wall stratigraphy, has made it possible to propose not only a reconstruction of the structure but also a detailed interpretation of the theater’s construction history. For its initial phase, both the archaeological and epigraphic records suggest a dating to the Caesarian age, followed by a phase of monumentalization, or more likely completion, during the Augustan age.