While in the Republican era tragedies and comedies were the most common performances in the theatres of Rome, Pliny the Younger wrote that during the imperial period, with the advent of the masses, who were uneducated and not prepared to appreciate the dramatic art, they gave way to the “cheapest�...

Vitruvius, in his work De Architectura, argued that the most suitable places to build theatres were “consonant”, i.e. places where the voice, from below, increases in volume as it rises upwards, supported by the shapes of the structure. When this was not enough, however, there were some tricks t...

The Puppet Theater was the first Italian Intangible Heritage to be included in the WHL. It is a type of puppet theater whose protagonists Charlemagne and his paladins, which spread in Sicily since the eighteenth century, arrived at its peak in mid-1800. Antiquarium Casa Pace, within walking distanc...

In Syracuse, in the Neapolis Archaeological Park, we can admire one of the most majestic theatres in the Greek world: the city theatre, which we know in its semicircular form shaped by the tyrant Hiero II around the 3rd century BC. The structure has a cavea with a diameter of 138 metres. The 67...

To overcome the issues caused by the different heights of the ground, as well as to build the steps used as seating, the ancient Romans used the technique of substructions, with the function of supporting the building above. Those of the theatre of Agrigentum, located on the western side, consisted...

The term indicates political regimes in which power is centralised in the hands of the few, who differ from the rest of the population in terms of economic or social merits....

The term democracy is usually understood in the positive sense of “government of the people”. Originally, however, the expression was used by the political opponents of Pericles – the founder of Athenian democracy – to refer in a derogatory way to the government of the plebs, understood as ...

This term refers to a room, with origins in Greek and Roman art, usually uncovered and delimited by a semicircular structure. It can be found in private or public buildings; in the latter case it will probably have monumental dimensions....

Phalaris was a tyrant of ancient Agrigento especially known for his cruelty: he had a torture machine, a bronze bull called the Bull of Phalaris, inside of which he roasted convicted people alive! A controversial individual, he was accused of taking power by deception, but under his leadership the...

As Cicero explains in In Verrem II, the arrival of the Romans to Agrigentum caused some friction between the old and new citizens: for this reason, in 193 BC the praetor Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus, brother of Scipio Africanus, issued a law that established a higher prevalence in the Senate of...