Odeon of Herodes Atticus
Marble Roman theater built into the Acropolis hillside, still hosting concerts beneath its ancient arches.
This guide to the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens opens with the death of Regilla, wife of one of the richest men in the Roman world, eight months pregnant when a servant in her husband's household struck her. It follows her brother, a Roman consul, standing before the emperor Marcus Aurelius to accuse her husband Herodes Atticus of ordering the assault, and the strange fact that the servant blamed for it was never punished and kept his place in the household. From there it turns to what Herodes built on this hillside in the years that followed, and how the theater survived centuries of ruin before music returned to its stone arches.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.