Theatre of Epidaurus
The most famous theatre of antiquity lies on a hillside beside the sanctuary of Asclepius, the god of healing. It held some 14,000 spectators and is renowned for its acoustics: a whisper on stage can be heard in the top rows. It is still used for performances every summer.
Epidaurus was one of the great healing centres of antiquity. The sick came to the sanctuary of Asclepius to sleep in the temple’s dormitory and receive cures in their dreams, and around the sanctuary baths, guest houses, a stadium and the theatre were built. The theatre was laid out in the second half of the 4th century BC and enlarged in the 2nd century BC with the upper rows. Pausanias, who travelled in Greece in the 2nd century AD, praised it as the most beautiful of all theatres and named Polykleitos as its builder.
The acoustics result from several factors working together: the steep, even slope, the rows of limestone that damp low frequencies such as background noise but let the higher tones of the voice carry far, and the open orchestra that reflects sound upwards. The theatre was excavated from 1881 onwards and since the 1950s has been a venue for ancient drama. It is an example of how the Greeks worked with the landscape: instead of building a tall structure, they set the auditorium into a natural hollow in the terrain.