Teatro all'Antica

View from the stage towards the gallery above the seating area.
The stage of the Teatro all'Antica, viewed from the seating area. The perspective scenery is a modern reconstruction of Scamozzi's original work.
Vincenzo Scamozzi's elevation (top) and floor plan (below) for the Teatro all'Antica.

The Teatro all'Antica ("Theater in the style of the ancients") is a theatre in Sabbioneta, northern Italy; it was the first free-standing, purpose-built theater in the modern world. The Teatro all'Antica is the second-oldest surviving indoor theater in the world (after the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza), and is, along with that theater and the Teatro Farnese in Parma, one of only three Renaissance theaters still in existence.[1]

  1. ^ Sir Nikolaus Pevsner writes that permanent theatres were first constructed in Ferrara (1531), Rome (1545), Mantua (1549), Bologna (1550), Siena (1561), Venice (1565), and Vicenza (the Teatro Olimpico) in 1580. Of these, only the Teatro Olimpico survives, along with the Teatro All'antica and the Teatro Farnese. See Pevsner’s A History of Building Types. London: Thames and Hudson, 1976, p. 66