The remains of a Roman theater, identified only in the twentieth century, lie near Piano La Roma in the municipal territory of Casoli. Its construction is estimated to the end of the first century BCE. The theatre would have been the focal point for the civic and cultural life of the small settlement of Cluviae, a typical Roman municipium in the rugged interior of what is now Abruzzo. Roman theatres of this period were semi-circular structures, built into hillsides for support, with tiered seating (the cavea) facing a raised stage (scaenae frons). Here, the stonework is fragmentary, the seating largely gone, the stage a ghost of its former self. Yet the site retains a quiet, evocative power. The outline of the orchestra and the remnants of the stage wall are discernible, and the setting is striking: the theatre looks out over the surrounding valleys and mountains, a reminder that even in a provincial backwater, Rome imposed its architectural and cultural order on the landscape.
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