The Roman amphitheatre of Terni, ancient Interamna Nahars, is the city's main and best-preserved archaeological monument of the Roman era; it stands in the historic centre and could hold ten thousand spectators.
What to see
It is older than the Colosseum in Rome, because it was built in the Julio-Claudian age under the emperor Tiberius, roughly in AD 30 or 32. The style is bichrome opus reticulatum, with rows of cubilia of sponga stone mixed with limestone elements from the Terni area. In later centuries the church of the Carmine and the bishop's palace were built over it, in places merging with the perimeter walls, but the elliptical shape, with a major axis of nearly a hundred metres and a minor one of seventy-three, and the central arena are still easily recognisable. Also visible are the perimeter ambulatory covered by a barrel vault, some radial rooms that carried the stands and a second annular corridor; other rooms, the podium and its corridor are still underground. The façade shows at ground level the characteristic half-pillars in small blocks of sponga, which mark out bays alternately closed and opened with arches.
Nothing is known of who built it, only of the patron, Faustus Titius Liberalis. A marble inscription found later records the dedication of the amphitheatre, in AD 32, to the providence of the emperor Tiberius, as well as the foundation of Terni, which the inscription dates to 672 BC; today a copy is fixed in the west wall, while the original is displayed in the archaeological museum of Terni. Since the 1970s the monument has been the subject of numerous recovery works. The amphitheatre occupied a peripheral area of the ancient town, set between the 17th-century church of the Carmine, the public gardens of the Passeggiata and the duomo.
Visiting
Today the amphitheatre is used in the summer season as a venue for live shows and as an open-air cinema, as well as being visited for its historic importance; days, hours and tickets should be checked with the comune of Terni.
Our editors' tip
Look on the west wall for the copy of the inscription that records Faustus Titius Liberalis and the dedication to Tiberius: the original is in the archaeological museum, but it is here that you read how Terni dated its own foundation, to 672 BC.
