The Antique Theatres of Fourvière

The Cavea, or the seating section, partially backs onto the hill, but is also supported by vaults. Only the 16 lower rows survive today, and they have been stripped of their white stone cladding over the centuries, after the site was abandoned.

The Opera was used as a stone quarry after it was abandoned, and most sizeable stone blocks disappeared and were reused in other constructions during the Middle Ages.

The outer walls are as thick as ever: 6.45 m deep, and 8 m high. This leads us to believe that a sloped roof must have covered the two tiers of seats which improved the acoustics.

A stairway divides the cavea in two and leads right up to the orchestra. The French academic Pierre Wuilleumier believed that there were two other stairways which were not reproduced in the modern renovation of the odeon.

The theatre was built in the 1st century BC during the reign of Emperor Augustus, and is one of the oldest in Gaul. East-facing, it was built on the side of Fourvière hill which overlooks the city. This type of structure is called an amphitheatre.

An amphitheatre is a circular, semicircular or curved, performance space, usually located outdoors. 

Emperor Hadrian expanded the theatre in the 2nd century by building additional seating further up the hill. At this time, the building could therefore have seated an audience of up to 10,000.

The front seats were built at ground level, whilst the ones behind were supported by systems of extensive vaults, for which the foundations still exist in the upper section of the cavea.

The construction site for this building was one of the biggest in Lugdunum. Some of the stones used were imported all the way from Glanum, a city which was once located in the modern-day region of Bouches-du-Rhône.

People mostly came to see musical shows or plays in the ancient Fourvière theatre. Its shape was actually designed with acoustics in mind: the rows of seats were arranged in such a way that the sound reverberated back towards the crowd.

Since 1933 more of the theatre has been discovered during excavation works, and subsequently exposed and restored. New surveys carried out in 2003 have enabled us to locate where the back wall of the stage would have stood.

In front of the stage there was a pit 46 m in length that had square holes drilled into it every 3 m. These housed runners for the poles and counterweights that supported the stage curtain.

We know that the back wall of the stage was as high as the cavea, meaning it was as high as all the tiers of seats. A sloped roof protected the stage and directed the sound downwards, therefore improving the acoustics.