Roman Amphitheatre of Teramo

Is it worth the trip?

Not on its own. This is a wall rather than an arena: you look at it from the street, you cannot go in, and the seating has gone. As a stop on a walk through Teramo’s old centre it is worth the ten minutes: it costs nothing to look at, and it sits between the cathedral, which is built partly on top of it, and the theatre. Bear in mind that the theatre is a building site, with works aimed at putting it back into use in 2027 (it.wikipedia), and is not open to visitors in the meantime.

Getting there

The amphitheatre is in the historic centre. Its wall is seen from via San Berardo, beside the cathedral (it.wikipedia), and from via Vincenzo Irelli (the street named on one of the photographs). No operator publishes a ticket or an opening time for it: the wall stands in public streets. Drivers will find a paid car park about 125 m away and a free one about 180 m away (OpenStreetMap). No bus stop is mapped right beside it, but all eight town bus lines pass through Piazza Garibaldi (it.wikipedia), about half a kilometre away. The town’s archaeological museum, the Museo archeologico Francesco Savini, is mapped about 200 m away (OpenStreetMap); the Interamnia page covers it and the town’s other Roman remains.

History

When the amphitheatre was built is uncertain. Pleiades describes it as a building of the 1st century AD and it.wikipedia puts it at about that time, while en.wikipedia dates it to about the 3rd–4th century AD.

In the Middle Ages it was quarried for stone, like the theatre, above all for the cathedral built over its north-western part (it.wikipedia). On 8 June 1583 Bishop Giulio Ricci, on a pastoral visit to the cathedral, had the earth cleared from the damp wall that emerged in the vegetable gardens beside it, and the record of that visit describes what was found: almost a quarter of the outer curve, radial walls that had carried the seating, a wall face 12 m high, three brick arches of the southern entrance and a woman’s right hand in Greek marble (it.wikipedia). In the 18th century the seminary was built over the interior.

Because houses had been built over both buildings, the remains of the amphitheatre were confused with those of the theatre until 1926. Excavations in 1937 identified them better, and the buildings later cleared from against the outer wall left its north–south course plainer to read (it.wikipedia). In the same year the minister of national education, Giuseppe Bottai, visited the theatre and the first exposed parts of the amphitheatre and decided to fund the recovery of both (it.wikipedia). Tunnels found beneath the structure, apparently dug for a military purpose, have led to the suggestion that the amphitheatre was once used as a fortress, though this remains a hypothesis (it.wikipedia).