The Roman Theatre at Oriculum (modern Otricoli, Italy). • Oriculum Home • Photos and Panoramas • Theatre Archive Home OCRICULUM (Otricoli) Umbria, Italy. The southernmost town of Umbria, on the left bank of the Tiber just N of the point where the Via Flaminia crosses. In 308 B.C. it had already concluded an alliance with Rome. The original settlement, the graves of which go back to the Early Iron Age, stood on a hill, but was destroyed in the social war; it was probably then that the city was moved from the hill to the river plain below, reorganized, and inscribed in the tribus Arnensis. It would seem to have flourished as a center of commerce and rich villas and to have continued to be important through the Empire. It was probably destroyed at the time of the Lombard invasion, after which we find no mention of it, and by the 13th c. the community had transferred itself back to its more defensible hilltop. Excavations were conducted here from a very early period, especially from 1776 to 1784, when a great quantity of material was removed. Somewhat fanciful plans of buildings were made by G. Pannini, but a detailed account of the work is lacking. Construction on the site is typical of the Empire: concrete faced with reticulate and small block, brick, or opus mixtum listatum. The forum was explored and a basilica of exceptionally interesting plan was found; unfortunately today this is completely buried. It was rich in sculpture, producing a fine series of portraits of the Julio-Claudian family. A theater and an amphitheater outside the city provided places for spectacles; the theater seems to have had a scaena of concave front, argument for a comparatively late date. The baths, of the 2d c., with a winter baths annex, were unusually rich in inscriptions and mosaics. The most imposing of the ruins is a vast substructure of at least 14 parallel vaults in two stories destined to support a public edifice of which nothing is visible. Walls, cisterns, and the debris of ancient construction dot the site, and along the Via Flaminia in the vicinity are remains of several monumental tombs. Pietrangeli was able to compile a list of 34 items known to have come from here; the most famous pieces are the heroic head of Jupiter and the octagonal mosaic pavement in the Sala Rotonda of the Vatican. All but a few pieces are in the Vatican collections. Other antiquities, especially inscriptions, are preserved at the site. The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites. Stillwell, Richard. MacDonald, William L. McAlister, Marian Holland. Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press. 1976.   The Roman Theatre at Oriculum leans with its back on the slope of the hill, while an artificial levelling supported by substructures now hidden was set before the cavea (stands): one of these, very imposing, decorated with niches on the front, remains on the Tiber's side.   The level ground hides the underground shaft in which the S. Vittore brook flows, coming out openly downhill near the aforesaid substructure. The cavea is 79 m. in diameter, 'it uses the ground behind, only partly leaning on it, and on both ends is built with substructure-rooms, three on the left, one on the right; it is divided in three parts, summa (highest part), media (middle) and ima (lowest).   Two partly visible ambulatories run behind the stands. The lower one with its vault in some points collapsed, is still left on both ends: on the right you see the parodos (entrance) to the stage built with big tufa blocks. Through some openings, only one of which still visible, the ambulatory joined the cavea, here without steps. From the ambulatory, open outside, with a concrete vault cast in wooden centring, and reticulate walls, the radial rooms supporting the cavea lead off, fanwise set, with a slightly tapered plan. Only a sector of the upper ambulatory is left, barrel-vaulted; the exterior perimeter is made of a containment wall in reticulate work, reinforced by pillars in squared tufa blocks, in accordance with a kind of masonry also used in Gubbio.   The doors opening on the ambulatory have horizontal lintels surmounted by discharging plugged arches, and lead upstairs to the highest stands where the porticus in summa gradinatione stood. On the whole, the monument can be compared to the Augustan theatre in Ostia.   From Oriculum archeological site signage.

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