Renaissance theatre · 1580–1585 · Vicenza, Veneto

Teatro Olimpico

The Teatro Olimpico is the oldest surviving indoor theatre in the world, built in Vicenza between 1580 and 1585 to a design by Andrea Palladio as the final masterwork of his career. Commissioned by the Accademia Olimpica, a learned society Palladio himself had helped found in 1555, the theatre was completed after his death by Vincenzo Scamozzi, who added the celebrated trompe-l’œil stage sets depicting ancient streets receding to a painted horizon — the oldest surviving stage scenery in existence. Together with Palladio’s other buildings in Vicenza, it forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 1994.

At a glance

Type: Indoor Renaissance theatre
Period: Constructed 1580–1585; inaugurated 3 March 1585
Style: Palladian Renaissance, modelled on ancient Roman theatre forms
Location: Piazza Matteotti 11, 36100 Vicenza VI — 45.5501° N, 11.5491° E

Overview

The Teatro Olimpico is a theatre in Vicenza, northern Italy, constructed between 1580 and 1585. It was the final design by the Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio and was not completed until after his death. The trompe-l’œil onstage scenery, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi to give the appearance of long streets receding to a distant horizon, was installed in 1585 for the inaugural performance and remains the oldest surviving stage set still in existence. The theatre was the home of the Accademia Olimpica, which Palladio had helped found in 1555.

History

The Accademia Olimpica commissioned the theatre in 1580 and appointed its founder-member Andrea Palladio as architect; Palladio died the same year, before construction was far advanced. His pupil Vincenzo Scamozzi oversaw completion and in 1585 designed the permanent perspective sets that fill the three large doorways and two smaller ones of the stage wall, depicting the streets of the mythical city of Thebes for the inaugural production of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. The theatre operated intermittently for elite academic performances through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before being opened to the public as a monument in the nineteenth century. It became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site “City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto” in 1994.

What you see

The auditorium is a compressed ellipse of tiered stone seating, modelled on the open-air theatres of antiquity but scaled to fit an existing urban palazzo block. Above the seating, statues of the Accademia Olimpica’s members crown the colonnade, while the ceiling is painted as an illusionistic sky to suggest an open-air performance space. The scaenae frons — the monumental back wall of the stage — is a Roman triumphal arch in wood and stucco, convincingly imitating marble, with five openings that reveal Scamozzi’s painted-perspective street scenes. These sets have never been dismantled and survive exactly as placed for the 1585 premiere.

Cultural significance

The Teatro Olimpico represents the Renaissance ambition to revive the theatrical culture of antiquity in built form, making Palladio’s interpretation of Vitruvius’s ancient theatrical principles fully concrete for the first time. Its inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage Site alongside Palladio’s villas and the Basilica Palladiana confirms its status as a global monument to Italian Renaissance architecture and humanism. The survival of Scamozzi’s original stage sets — unchanged for over four centuries — makes the theatre a uniquely intact document of early-modern performance space and illusion.

Practical information

Address: Piazza Matteotti 11, 36100 Vicenza VI, Italy
Opening hours: Check official website for current hours; generally open Tuesday–Sunday
Admission: Ticket required; combined tickets with other Vicenza museums available
Website: teatrolimpico.vi.it

Getting there

The Teatro Olimpico is in the historic centre of Vicenza, a five-minute walk from Vicenza railway station. Vicenza is served by frequent regional and intercity trains on the Venice–Verona–Milan line; from Venice Santa Lucia the journey takes about 45 minutes, from Verona Porta Nuova about 30 minutes. Once at the station, the theatre is easily reached on foot following signs for the centro storico.

Sources & resources

Find it on the map

Google Maps See the location on a full map → Street View Walk around the place virtually → OpenStreetMap Free community cartography →

The Olympic Theater is one of the artistic wonders of Vicenza. It is located inside the so-called Palazzo del Territorio, which looks onto Piazza Matteotti, at the eastern end of Corso Palladio, the main route of the historic center. In the Renaissance, a theater is not a building in its own right - as will become practice later on - but it consists in the temporary setting up of open spaces or pre-existing volumes; in the case of Vicenza, palace courtyards or the hall of the Palazzo della Ragione. In 1580 Palladio was 72 years old when he was commissioned by the Olympic Academy, the cultural assembly to which he himself belongs, to set up a stable theater venue.



The project is clearly inspired by the Roman theaters described by Vitruvius: an elliptical cavea, surrounded by a colonnade, with statues on the frieze, facing a rectangular stage and a majestic proscenium on two architectural orders, opened by three arches and punctuated by half-columns, all inside which there are niches and niches with statues and panels with bas-reliefs.



The criticism defines the work as &#39;mannerist&#39; for the intense chiaroscuro, accentuated among other things by a series of optical devices dictated by the great experience of the architect: The progressive withdrawal of the fronts with the height, visually compensated by the protruding statues; the play of projections and niches that increase the illusion of depth. Palladio prepares the drawing a few months before his death and will not see it completed; it was his son Silla who oversaw the execution by delivering the theater to the city in 1583.&nbsp;The first representation, on the occasion of the Carnival of 1585, is memorable: the choice falls on a Greek tragedy, the Oedipus King of Sophocles, and the scenography reproduces the seven streets of Thebes that can be seen in the five openings of the proscenium with a refined game prospective. The creator of this little wonder in wonder is Vincenzo Scamozzi, Palladio&#39;s spiritual heir.



The effect is so successful that these wooden superstructures will become an integral part of the theater. Scamozzi is also entrusted with the construction of the accessory rooms: the Odeo, or the hall where the Academy meetings took place, and the Antiodeo, decorated in the seventeenth century with monochrome squares by the talented painter from Vicenza Francesco Maffei.



The fame of the new theater spread first in Venice and then throughout Italy, arousing the admiration of those who saw the humanistic dream of reviving classical art materialized there. Then, despite such an exciting start, the Olimpico&#39;s activity was interrupted by the anti-theatrical censorship imposed by the Counter-Reformation and the theater was reduced to a simple place of representation: Pope Pius VI was welcomed there in 1782, Emperor Francis I of Austria in 1816 and his heir Ferdinando I in 1838. With the mid-nineteenth century classical performances resumed from time to time, but we will have to wait until the last post-war period, having escaped the danger of aerial bombing, to seriously return to show in a theater that does not has equals in the world.


&nbsp;

https://culturalheritageonline.com/places/teatro-olimpico-l3010/

#CulturalHeritage #CHO