The Greek theatre of Syracuse lies on the south slopes of the Temenite hill, overlooking the modern city of Syracuse in southeastern Sicily. It was first built in the 5th century BC, rebuilt in the 3rd century BC and renovated again in the Roman period. Today, it is a part of the Unesco World Heritage Site of "Syracuse and the Rocky Necropolis of Pantalica". Important modifications were made to the theatre, perhaps at the time when the colonia was founded in the early Augustan period. The cavea was modified to a semicircular form, typical of Roman theatres, rather than the horseshoe used in Greek theatres and corridors allowing access past the scene building. The scene building itself was reconstructed in monumental form with rectangular niches at centre and two niches with a semicircular plan on the sides, containing doors to the scene. A new ditch was dug for the curtain, with a control room. In the orchestra, the old euripos was buried, replaced by a new canal, much tighter and closer to the stairs of the cavea, expanding its diameter from 16 m to 21.4 m. The decoration of the scene probably underwent renovations in the Flavian and/or Antonine periods. In the late Imperial period other modifications were conducted, designed to adapt the orchestra for water games and the scene was probably moved back. Traces of adaptations to allow the theatre to host gladiatorial battles and spectacles with beasts by the elimination of the first steps of the cavea to create a raised wall protecting the spectators do not exist. Instead, these spectacles probably continued to take place in the amphitheatre found in Syracuse since the Augustan period. An inscription which is now lost mentioned a Neratius Palmatus as the one responsible for a renovation of the scene: if this was the same person who restored the Curia at Rome after the Sack of Rome by Alaric in 410, then the final works on the theatre at Syracuse can be dated to the beginning of the fifth century AD, by which time the building was nearly nine hundred years old.
