Thrace’s largest theater unearthed in Perinthos

TEKİRDAĞ

Excavations continue to unearth the largest theater in Thrace, located in the Ancient City of Perinthos in the Marmara Ereğlisi district of Tekirdağ.

The head of the excavations, Professor Zeynep Koçel Erdem stated that the theater is the largest one in Thrace, and said, “It is not possible to estimate it exactly right now but let me tell you its dimensions; 90 meters by 130 meters, it is quite a large one. It is the largest known theater in the ancient cities of Thrace.”

Stating that excavations continue in the theater section in the west of the Acropolis, Erdem said the following:

“The Acropolis covers a very large area. The upper part of the city is 1.5 kilometers long and 500 meters wide, and there are huge monumental structures, public buildings of the city, and the theater is one of them. The importance of the theater here is that it is one of the prestige buildings of the city and the most important and largest theater of Turkish Thrace. Although the steps and benches are buried, we hope that they can be uncovered. Although it is said by the public that they were moved for the construction of modern buildings, we plan to reach the original steps in the surroundings. This place gives us findings from up to the archaic period. In particular, ceramics began in the classical period, mainly in the 400th century and later in the Roman period. We can say that this place was used until the Roman period, even until the end of Rome in the appearance of a typical Greek theater.”

Noting that the excavation will take a long time, Erdem said, “Depending on the number of employees, the buildings can be unearthed one by one in five-six years. Ephesus has been excavated for 100 years, Pergamon has been excavated for 100 years, even if it doesn’t take that long, this is very long-term work, and I think it will take quite a long time to uncover the entire city. There are structures that we know this from ancient sources and from coin descriptions.”

Erdem said that there is also the Stadion, which is a very important structure and they plan to include it in the excavation project in the coming years.

“Apart from that, we think that there are different large structures such as the parliament building or the agora or the baths in the acropolis, which are buried. These will be unearthed in future excavations as a result of geophysical studies,” she added.