Syria Trails › Places

Bosra Roman Theatre and Citadel

مسرح بصرى الروماني وقلعتها

One of the best-preserved Roman theatres anywhere, built in the 2nd century AD and later enclosed by an Ayyubid citadel that protected it.

In Bosra, in Daraa governorate in southern Syria, one of the world's finest Roman theatres hides inside a black stone fortress. It was built in the 2nd century AD when Bosra was capital of the Roman province of Arabia, a trading and administrative hub on the caravan routes.

Built of the black basalt typical of the Hauran, it has a vast cavea of stone tiers for thousands of spectators and a stage backed by a Corinthian colonnaded façade, with remarkable acoustics.

The theatre is 102 metres across and seats about 17,000, among the largest of the Roman world, serving a city that once had some 80,000 inhabitants. It was probably built under Trajan, in the second quarter or second half of the 2nd century, outside the town walls, before being absorbed into its fortifications. The Seljuks turned it into a fortress after 1076, and it was substantially restored between 1947 and 1970; before that it was full of sand, which may have helped protect its interior.

Its superb preservation owes to later history: fortified in Islamic times, it was enclosed by the Ayyubids in the early 13th century within a massive citadel with defensive towers against the Crusader threat. The fortress filled and shielded the theatre until 20th-century clearance revealed it whole. Ancient Bosra has been a World Heritage site since 1980, and the theatre long hosted the Bosra Festival.

Note: photos may not reflect the site's current condition.

For the visitor

Photos

Photos: Dosseman — via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA) · Matson Collection — via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain) · (Ergo) — via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY)