Teatro di Marcello

Julius Caesar began the theatre, expropriating the site and demolishing the temple of Pietas for it, and was criticised for doing so; Augustus took the work up. It was probably complete by 17 BC, when it was used for the ludi saeculares, and was dedicated in 13 or 11 BC in the name of Marcellus, the emperor's nephew, who had died at Baiae in 23 BC. Vespasian and Alexander Severus restored it. Its diameter is 130 metres and its capacity has been calculated at 15,000, or 20,000 at need; of the three orders of the travertine facade, two survive. The Pierleoni and the Fabi turned the ruin into a fortress. In the 1500s Baldassarre Peruzzi raised the Savelli palace on top of it, and the Orsini bought that in 1729. The Comune di Roma acquired the lower Roman part in the 1930s and excavated and restored it.