Description
The San Pietro degli Schiavoni Archaeological Area is a piece of Roman Brindisi preserved beneath the Teatro Verdi, in the heart of the old town: an entire block of the ancient city, with streets, houses and baths, that you can visit because the theater is raised above street level.
A paved street of Roman basalt slabs crosses it from north to south. On either side stand the walls of houses and, above all, a bath complex, where you can make out the calidarium, the hot room, and the frigidarium, the cold one.
The excavations began almost by chance. In the early 1960s old houses in the neighborhood were torn down to build the new courthouse, and the bulldozers destroyed the first medieval remains; once the work was halted, archaeologists uncovered the Roman block.
The theater later designed for the site had to change too: architect Enrico Nespega conceived it as a steel "suspended theater," to leave the ruins visible.
The name comes from the neighborhood, named after a church of San Pietro and the "Schiavoni," the Slavic and Albanian immigrants who arrived from the second half of the 15th century.
A paved street of Roman basalt slabs crosses it from north to south. On either side stand the walls of houses and, above all, a bath complex, where you can make out the calidarium, the hot room, and the frigidarium, the cold one.
The excavations began almost by chance. In the early 1960s old houses in the neighborhood were torn down to build the new courthouse, and the bulldozers destroyed the first medieval remains; once the work was halted, archaeologists uncovered the Roman block.
The theater later designed for the site had to change too: architect Enrico Nespega conceived it as a steel "suspended theater," to leave the ruins visible.
The name comes from the neighborhood, named after a church of San Pietro and the "Schiavoni," the Slavic and Albanian immigrants who arrived from the second half of the 15th century.