The Roman theatre at Verulamium is one of only a handful of true theatres known from Roman Britain and the best-preserved example. Built around AD 140–150 just inside the town walls adjacent to Watling Street and a major temple precinct (Insula XVI), it was modified and enlarged in the later second and early third centuries, with a final phase around AD 300, before falling out of use and being used as a rubbish dump by the late fourth century. Its plan is of the Gallo-Roman type, with a near-circular orchestra and a small stage, suiting it to a mixed range of performances, ceremonies, and ritual activity rather than purely classical drama.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
As the civitas capital of the Catuvellauni and a municipium (probably the only one in Britain apart from possibly York), Verulamium was wealthy and self-consciously Romanised, and its theatre — closely associated with the adjacent Romano-Celtic temple — underlines the town's status and the importance of public religious spectacle in provincial urban life. It is the most architecturally ambitious theatre yet identified in the province.
The theatre was excavated by Kathleen Kenyon in 1933–34, revealing the cavea, orchestra, stage building, and successive structural phases, along with later occupation including a shrine, shops fronting Watling Street, and substantial fourth-century dumping containing coins, pottery, and animal bone. The remains are consolidated and on public display on the G
The Roman theatre at Verulamium is one of only a handful of true theatres known from Roman Britain and the best-preserved example. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a theatre site from the Roman period in Britain.
Verulamium Roman theater is classified as a Roman theatre — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Verulamium (0.2 km), Verulamium, part of wall and ditch of Roman city (0.8 km), Gorhambury Ancient Site (1.7 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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