Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus

This guide to the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens starts with the wooden bleachers that once collapsed under a festival crowd, and why the city cut permanent stone seating into the hillside instead. It follows the City Dionysia, the spring festival where Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes premiered some of their most famous plays, and the sixty-seven marble thrones for Athens's priests and officials, including the grand seat reserved for the priest of Dionysus, carved with grapevines and satyrs. Look at that front row of thrones before you take a seat yourself.