Odeon Of Herodes Atticus

Herodes Atticus, the Athenian magnate and rhetorician, built this theatre into the southern slope of the Acropolis in AD 161 in memory of his wife Regilla; it was roofed in cedar, seated some five thousand, and stood for barely a century before the Herulian invasion of 267 left it a ruin. Restored in the mid twentieth century with new marble seating, it became the summer stage of the Athens Festival, and remains the most theatrically charged auditorium in Greece: open to the night sky, the lit Parthenon above and the city spread below. Symphony concerts, opera in concert and dance are given there through the festival months, before audiences climbing the same stone tiers Roman Athens climbed.