The historic and huge Theater of Pompey, the City’s first stone (brick) theater and built to hold ten thousand spectators, opened its doors to the public in 55 BC.
Pompey, a member of the First Triumvirate, but, later, a bitter rival of Julius Caesar, and following the advice of his colleague, Sulla, constructed the theater for politically motivated and propgandistic reasons. It represents, historically, the first stone theater and building in the City created by a private person for public entertainment.
Pompey got away with the illegal, highly unusual, but grandiose construction, the ‘Teatrum Magnum’ (Grand Theater), by a clever ruse: the inclusion within it, at the summit, of a temple dedicated to Venus Victrix.
Resting on a solid foundation of concrete, this highly complex structure contained the traditional features of a Roman theater (substructure, cavea, scaena) and, as well, a temple, portico, gardens, and shops. Marble benches served simultaneously as seats for the theater and steps to the temple. Innovative air vents cut into the structure justified its claim as the first ‘air-conditioned’ public structure in the City. Its colorful and large portico, an extraordinary and popular esplanade named the Hecatostylum, consisted of one hundred columns enclosing a public garden together with art galleries showcasing sculptures and paintings from all over the Roman world. After Pompey’s assassination in 48 BC, Caesar celebrated his victory over his followers in the theater, the site where, ironically, he would be cut down by assassins four years later. Until the construction of the Theater of Balbus in 13 BC, Pompey’s theater was the only permanent structure of this kind in the City. It flourished until the 6th century when the urban population diminished rapidly after the Gothic destruction of the aqueduct system in 536 AD.
During the later Middle Ages and beyond, Romans used the structure as a quarry for the construction of many diverse buildings. In the cellars of several neighborhood buildings, the da Pancrazio Ristorante, for example, parts of the ancient structure remain. In its cellar stands an ancient column, described by some tour guides as the one against which Julius Caesar was stabbed to death. It’s reported that from one such tourist group came the question: were there many people in the restaurant when the killing took place?
In the late 19th century, workers discovered a bronze sculpture of Hercules, a remnant of the Theater, now prominently displayed in the Vatican Museum.
Nearby, the Via Grotta Pinta, an irregularly shaped passageway behind the Campo, owes its semi-circular shape to the surrounding buildings whose foundations lie over those of Pompey’s Theater, including the Renaissance palace, Orsini-Pio-Rihighetti in Campo dei Fiori.
A small dark and sinister-looking corridor, the Passetto del Biscione (Arco di Grotto Pinta), conveniently connects the Grotta Pinta area to Via Biscione.
The passageway contains a blue frescoed ceiling depicting a young angel. Festooned with a long red ribbon and white flowers, its colorfully painted walls frame a small image of the Madonna at the Biscione end of the tunnel.
Beyond the Passetto on Via del Biscione 76, stands the colorful Albergo del Sole al Biscione, which for many years housed Notre Dame University architecture students who resided in the City in their third year of undergraduate studies. Since 2017, however, these now live in the Villa on the Celio, one of two ND facilities located several blocks behind the Colosseum on or near Via Ostilia.
Just a few blocks away on Via dei Chiavari, stands the Albergo Pomezia, another hotel not nearly as old as the del Sole, but highly popular with international student groups. Like many buildings in the area, it sits directly over the foundations of the Theater of Pompey. Well-situated for its guests because a stone’s throw away from the Campo, the hotel became for many years (since 2005) the annual headquarters for Holy Cross College’s Rome Through The Ages classes. The albergo hosted the student group for the last time in 2023. In 2024, the building’s proprietors announced a sweeping renovation of the entire fabric and the Mariani brothers (Maurizio, Riccardo and Claudio) who operated the hotel, opted to let their lease expire after three generations of presence at this centrally located hotel situated in the very heacelleriart of Renaissance Rome.
The foundations of the Pompey Theater Portico extend towards Largo Argentina. Sometimes the Roman Senate assembled for meetings in the Portico and did so on the Ides of March, 44 BC. Here at base of the statue of Pompey, senatorial conspirators infamously stabbed to death the ruler of the City, (‘dictator perpetuo’), Julius Caesar. The General Council Chamber in Palazzo Spada, near Palazzo Farnese, now houses the infamous relic of that historic event.
