Ancient Theatre of Taormina was built by the ancient Greeks around the 3rd century BC It is the second largest in the whole of Sicily, after the theater at Syracuse - its diameter is 120 meters! In addition, it is one of the most well-preserved ancient ruins of the island.

According to legend, the builders for the construction of the theater had to bulldoze a mountain of moving about 100 thousand cubic meters of limestone. The theater itself is built of brick. Audience seats, which could accommodate up to 10 thousand people, facing south-east towards the Ionian Sea. Unfortunately, most of the seats are not preserved to this day. However, you can still see the wall surrounding kaveyu theater proscenium and the rear wall of the main stage and service extensions. From the decorations were only fragments, which, however, suggest that the theater was decorated with Corinthian columns and rich ornamentation. We have survived and some of the standing near the temple, which was later converted into a church of San Pakrac.

In the 1st century AD, when the power in Sicily was in the hands of the Romans, the theater was significantly rebuilt and remodeled for favorite sights inhabitants of the Roman Empire - the bloody gladiator fights. Excellent acoustics, once allows you to hear the actors' voices, even in the last series, it is now magnified cries of defeated gladiators and excited spectators.

Only in the 19th century, the ancient Greek theater, it was decided to restore the - by the way, in the work involved and Russian architects and Messmacher Koss, who completed facades. Today, this popular tourist attraction is also a symbol of Taormina. It regularly hosts a variety of cultural and artistic events, such as the International Festival of Arts «Taormina arte».