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Hidden gem3rd c. BC – 7th c. ADTicketed

Tyndaris

Tindari, Colonia Augusta Tyndaritanorum, Tyndarion

city · Sicily, Italy

What it is
Tyndaris is the ancient city on the promontory of Tindari, above the sea on the north coast of Sicily: founded by the Greeks in 396 BC, it became a Roman colony under Augustus, and its theatre, its houses and baths and a two-storey arched gateway still stand in an archaeological park.
What you’ll see
The theatre is the set piece. Its rows of seats were cut into the natural hollow of the hillside for an audience of about 3,000, at the end of the 4th century BC (it.wikipedia) or the beginning of the 3rd (Aditus description); in the Roman period the stage building was rebuilt, the four lowest rows were removed and a wall built round the floor so that it could serve as an arena for games.
Worth the trip?
Yes, if you are on the north coast between Messina and Palermo.
Getting there & cost
Tindari is a village of the comune of Patti, about 7 km from the centre of Patti (OpenStreetMap). By car, leave the A20 Messina–Palermo motorway at Falcone coming from Messina, or at Patti coming from Palermo (it.wikipedia).Ticketed · €6, reduced €3 (EU citizens aged 18–25) · checked 21 October 2026Hours, tickets and parking
A semicircle of stone seating rows cut into a hillside, seen from the upper rows, with a low stage platform on the levelled floor below, umbrella pines and cypresses along the top, and the open sea beyond.
The theatre, built by the Greeks and remodelled under Rome, with the Tyrrhenian Sea behind it. · Photo: Bernard Gagnon · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Close-up of a black-and-white mosaic panel showing a running bull, with two conical caps topped by stars above it, framed by a border of coloured stone pieces.
A black-and-white mosaic from the Roman baths. · Photo: Bernard Gagnon · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The theatre seen across its floor, a flat sandy arena ringed by a low curved wall below the bottom row of seats, with the remains of a stone arch on the right and the sea beyond the trees.
The theatre floor, walled off as an arena when the Romans adapted the building for games. · Photo: Skaffo90 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

What is there today

The theatre is the set piece. Its rows of seats were cut into the natural hollow of the hillside for an audience of about 3,000, at the end of the 4th century BC (it.wikipedia) or the beginning of the 3rd (Aditus description); in the Roman period the stage building was rebuilt, the four lowest rows were removed and a wall built round the floor so that it could serve as an arena for games. Of that Roman stage only the foundations and one arch, restored in 1939, remain (it.wikipedia). It is still used: a festival of dance, music and theatre has been held there since 1956 (it.wikipedia).

Along the city’s upper main street stands the so-called Basilica, in fact a monumental gateway into the main square: a two-storey building of squared sandstone whose central passage is spanned by nine arches under a barrel vault (it.wikipedia). Its date is uncertain: the 4th century according to it.wikipedia, probably the reign of Augustus according to the Aditus description, which adds that it was damaged in AD 365, repaired and still in use in the 5th century. Between the upper and middle streets a whole city block has been excavated: six shops along the street, and above them, on terraces, two houses with columned courtyards, built in the last two centuries BC on top of earlier houses and remodelled under the empire (it.wikipedia; the Aditus description). Public baths on the upper terrace, of the middle imperial period, keep black-and-white floor mosaics with sea creatures, Dionysiac scenes and the symbols of Tyndaris and of Sicily, dated to the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD (Aditus description). Stretches of the city wall survive round the edge of the plateau (en.wikipedia), and the Antiquarium shows finds from the excavations, among them two winged Victories of the 2nd century BC and a portrait head of Augustus found near the “Basilica” (Aditus description).

Is it worth the trip?

Yes, if you are on the north coast between Messina and Palermo. This is a whole ancient town on a headland rather than a single monument: a theatre with the sea behind the seats, a gateway that still stands two storeys high, houses and baths with their mosaics in place, and the Marian sanctuary on the site of the old acropolis (it.wikipedia). The remains are in fair condition because their sandstone blocks were of little use for later building (it.wikipedia).

Two things to know. The theatre is not large (en.wikipedia; about 3,000 seats), so come for the setting and the town as a whole rather than for the theatre alone. And the city began Greek: the street plan probably dates from the foundation, the wall from the 3rd century BC and the theatre’s seating from the Greek city, while the houses, the baths and the theatre’s arena belong to the town of the Roman period.

Getting there

Tindari is a village of the comune of Patti, about 7 km from the centre of Patti (OpenStreetMap). By car, leave the A20 Messina–Palermo motorway at Falcone coming from Messina, or at Patti coming from Palermo (it.wikipedia). A car park is mapped about 230 m from the site (OpenStreetMap). Without a car, the station for Tindari is Oliveri-Tindari, about 800 m from the Coda di Volpe footpath, which climbs from the lagoons of Marinello at the foot of the promontory to the sanctuary in about two hours (it.wikipedia). en.wikipedia adds that AST buses serve Tindari, but OpenStreetMap maps no stop near the site.

The area is open Tuesday to Sunday and closed on Mondays: 09.00 to 17.30 from 1 to 15 October, 09.00 to 17.00 from 16 to 31 October, with the Antiquarium on the same hours; the operator’s hours for November and the winter were not yet published when its page was read. A ticket is €6, or €3 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25, and free under 18. On the first Sunday of every month entry is free, with tickets issued only at the site. A combined ticket with the Roman villa at Patti, valid for three days, costs €11.20 (reduced €4) (Parco archeologico di Tindari and its ticket office Aditus Culture, read 21 October 2026 — check before travelling, since hours change with the season).

Visiting details

Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday, 09.00–17.30 from 1 to 15 October and 09.00–17.00 from 16 to 31 October; closed Mondays. The Antiquarium keeps the same hours. The operator had not yet published its hours from November when this was read.
Tickets
€6, reduced €3 (EU citizens aged 18–25); free under 18, and free for everyone on the first Sunday of the month, when tickets are issued only at the site. A combined ticket with the Villa Romana di Patti, valid for 3 days from the first entry, is €11.20 (reduced €4).
Parking
Car park "Parcheggio Tindari" about 230 m from the site's point (OSM way/233937975).

Before you go

  • No bus stop or railway station is mapped next to the site. The station for Tindari is Oliveri-Tindari, about 800 m from the Coda di Volpe footpath, which takes about two hours up to the sanctuary.

Hours and prices checked 21 October 2026 on the operator's own site. Confirm before travelling.

History

Traces of a Bronze Age settlement have been found under one of the Roman blocks (it.wikipedia). The city itself was founded by Dionysius I of Syracuse in 396 or 395 BC for Messenian exiles, who named it after their patron gods, the Dioscuri, sons of Tyndareus (en.wikipedia). It was laid out on a regular grid: three main streets 8 m wide running along the plateau, crossed at right angles by steeper side streets 3 m wide, with the drains running beneath them (it.wikipedia). The wall, rebuilt in the 3rd century BC on the line of an earlier one, ran for about 3 km (it.wikipedia).

In the First Punic War Tyndaris was at first a Carthaginian base; in 257 BC a Roman fleet fought the Carthaginians off its coast, and after the fall of Panormus in 254 BC the city expelled its Carthaginian garrison and joined Rome (en.wikipedia). Cicero called it a nobilissima civitas, and it suffered at the hands of Verres, who carried off its statue of Mercury (en.wikipedia). In the civil war between Sextus Pompey and Octavian it was one of Pompey’s bases until Octavian’s forces took it (en.wikipedia; it.wikipedia dates its capture to 36 BC). Under Augustus it became the Colonia Augusta Tyndaritanorum (it.wikipedia; the title is known from an inscription, en.wikipedia).

The Roman city suffered a great landslide in the early empire (AD 17, according to it.wikipedia) and earthquakes in the 4th century, one of them in AD 365 (it.wikipedia; Aditus description). Pliny also records that half the city was once swallowed by the sea, at a date no source gives (en.wikipedia). It survived as a bishop’s seat, recorded from 498, passed to the Byzantines in 535 and was taken and destroyed by the Arabs in 836 (en.wikipedia; it.wikipedia). The first excavations were made in 1838–1839; the archaeological superintendencies of Syracuse and Messina dug again in 1960–1964 and in the 1990s (it.wikipedia).

More photographs

A ruined building of large squared sandstone blocks pierced by wide round arches, open as passages, standing among grass and scattered blocks against a blue sky.
The so-called Basilica, in fact a monumental gateway into the city's main square. · Photo: Bernard Gagnon · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Several brick columns of different heights standing among low stone walls of an excavated house, with shrubs between them and the sea on the horizon.
Columns of a Roman house in the excavated city block. · Photo: Bernard Gagnon · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
An excavated room with rough stone walls, its whole floor covered by a mosaic of geometric borders around a central medallion.
A mosaic floor still in place in one of the excavated rooms. · Photo: Bernard Gagnon · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A line of large rough stone blocks running along a scrubby slope, with prickly pear growing beside it and a valley, a town and mountains inland in the distance.
A stretch of the city wall on the inland side of the promontory. · Photo: Bernard Gagnon · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

  • Excavated rooms of the villa seen from above, low walls of rough stone and brick around bare earth floors, a squared brick pier in the foreground and a raised metal walkway with railings running along the far side under the roof.

    Photo: Rjdeadly · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    6 km · villa · Sicily

    Villa Romana di Patti

    The explored part is the centre of the house: a courtyard surrounded by a portico (the peristyle), with the living rooms around it (it.wikipedia).

  • A single column built of curved bricks rising from low stone walls, with grass around it, a squared block of masonry behind and modern houses at the edge of the site under a blue sky.

    Photo: Effems · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    9 km · villa · Sicily

    Roman villa of San Biagio

    The house was laid out on a square plan around a courtyard with a portico of eight columns a side, the peristyle (it.wikipedia, de.wikipedia).

  • A sunken room floor of pale tesserae, its faint geometric pattern crossed by long cracks where the floor has sagged and split, enclosed on three sides by low walls of squared sandstone blocks with traces of plaster, under a frame of scaffolding poles.

    Photo: Rjdeadly · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    24 km · bath · Sicily

    Baths of Bagnoli

    A fenced strip of excavation about 32 m long and 7 m wide (de.wikipedia), holding a row of six rooms (the operator): a cold-bath suite of three rooms, a warm room (tepidarium) and the two rooms of the hot bath (caldarium).

Straight-line distances.

Sources

Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.

SourceLicence
Pleiades 462527CC BY
Wikidata Q127431480CC0
OpenStreetMap way/233937999ODbL
Pleiades — Greek Theatre of Tindarilicence not recorded
Wikidata — Teatro greco di Tindari (Q3826959)licence not recorded
Wikidata — Tindari, the modern village (Q671481)licence not recorded
Wikipedia (it) — TindariCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (en) — TindariCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (it) — Teatro greco di TindariCC BY-SA 4.0
Parco archeologico di Tindari — tickets and hours, Area archeologica di Tindari (the operator)licence not recorded
Parco archeologico di Tindari — opening hours of all the park's sites (the operator)licence not recorded
Aditus Culture — Parco archeologico di Tindari (the official ticket office the operator links to)licence not recorded