Théâtre Gallo Romain

This guide to the Theatre Gallo Romain in Lyon traces how a Roman theater built for five thousand spectators around 15 BCE, under Augustus, came to hold twice that many people. It follows the emperor Hadrian's expansion of the theater a century later, when builders added a new outer ring of seating, and the centuries afterward when Lugdunum's fortunes turned and the theater slid under earth and ivy. Look for the seam in the stone tiers above you, where the older bowl meets the newer collar built around it.