Condominio theatres of Central Italy

The historical theatres are currently scheduled for 2026, so it’s time for a deeper look. Here’s my “visitor” experience in 2025.

First of all, bad news for Tsunami and probably others who ticked it as visited: the nomination has since been reduced from 62 to 18 and Urbino is no longer among them. Also interesting is, that from the 18 theatres, 4 are actually not in the Marche region. Bagnacavallo and Sant’Agata Feltria are in Emilia-Romagna, Amelia and Spoleto in Umbria. Spoleto is now your best change for an accidental tick, in case you visited the city centre as well, while visiting the Longobards component of Basilica di San Salvatore.

Having family in Italy, I luckily saw two more places. My accidental visits (from the outside) include Bagnacavallo, Pesaro and Spoleto. During my last visit in May 2025 I set myself the goal to visit the interior of at least one of them. I did not succeed. The problem with these theatres is that they are still active theatres and not museums. Your safest option to see one from the inside would be to book a ticket for a play (in Italian, of course). I am not a big fan of plays, so I researched for guided tours.

Bagnacavallo
They post the dates for guided tours on viviravenna.it, but only for the same month. There are usually 2 or 3 tours per month, so you need to be really lucky. I never got an answer to my …

I just noticed that this was a new nomination from Italy in 2021: Historical 62 theatres in the Marche Region. Yes, I've been to 1 of the 62 theaters! 

In 2012 when I visited Urbino, I saw Teatro Sanzio. In fact this theater is in the core zone of the Urbino WHS, right by Palazzo Ducale. The name Sanzio comes of course from Urbino's most famous son, painter Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino. 

Now, that was 2012, and I couldn't have put this theatre in the context with the other 61 theaters. It must be that Italy believes that these 62 theaters have something in common that is World Heritage worthy. 

The nomination document says things like: "the synergy that can establish with the historical centres, where they often are the hard core"; "The close identity relationship that binds them to local communities." I also like the sentence: "The theatre, both in the form of an independent building and as a space hosted in the municipal building, became the paradigm of an era, the symbol of a society's cultural self-identification." Perhaps the role of theaters was similar to that of churches. Church to the religion, theater to the arts.  

In the photo the large building in the background is the Palazzo Ducale. In front of it in the center is Teatro Sanzio, seen from the back. The round structure connected at the back of the theater is another interesting historical landmark in Urbino, Rampa Elicoidale. 

Within …