Ausgrabungsstätte Römisches Theater

Next to the railway station and the Citadel in Mainz, the Ausgrabungsstätte Römisches Theater preserves the remains of the city's Roman past. The Romans founded Mogontiacum as a double legionary camp in 13 or 12 BC, where the Main joins the Rhine. From that camp grew the capital of the province of Germania Superior. The theatre raised here was the largest the Romans built north of the Alps, with a diameter of 116 metres. Its stage ran 42 metres wide, and around ten thousand spectators could take their seats. It stood at the centre of the city's public life.

The theatre probably owes its origin to the funerary games held in Drusus's honour. From 9 BC the army paraded at his cenotaph, the Drususstein, nearby. The sixty local Gallic communities may have held their thanksgiving ceremonies here. An earlier building of wood very likely preceded the stone one. After the city wall rose in the mid-fourth century, builders took the theatre's stones for new projects. The massive vaults lasted longer, and the monasteries close by used them as catacombs from the sixth century. A last mention in the eleventh century describes ruins built in the Roman manner for circus games and theatrical spectacles. The Citadel's construction levelled the site in the seventeenth century, and the theatre sank into oblivion.

Railway construction uncovered the stage building's foundations in 1884. Serious excavation began only in 1998, and the stone structure it exposed is there for you to see today. The Drususstein still stands 340 metres away, an easy walk from the excavation.