We see, in front of us now, the lower part of the façade of the theater in Philippi, Greece.
In front of the façade was a marble paved square upon which, at the Byzantine time, were workshops.
The walls of the workshops were built upon the marble pavement of the square.
Pillars, with muses depicted on them, supported arches with space between the arches.
In the Classical time, the time when this monument was a theatre, curtains covered the openings and behind the curtains were the actors’ chambers and storage area for the theater.
But when the Romans came, the Romans modified the theater making it into an arena. For that reason, they removed the curtains that hung between the pillars, and they built up the space between the pillars. So, when the archeologists found this place all of the spaces between the pillars were closed up with walls.
With this Roman modification, the actors’ chambers were turned into cages for lions and beasts. And open in the middle, (in the left of the above picture) was a kind of entrance which led to another ground chamber dug into the bedrock exactly in the middle of the orchestra.
Inside the orchestra used to be a mechanism, like a lift, bringing the lions right in the middle of the orchestra through a floor door. Have you seen the movie, Gladiator? It was something like that.
The archeologists, to restore the monument closer to its original function. removed the walls between the pillars, except for one – there for you to see (in the left-middle of the picture above) how this placed looked at the time of the Romans.
So, now you see the whole area: from where the lions entered the orchestra (on the left), the Roman façade in between the middle columns, and two Classical façades on the left and right of the Roman façade.
The classical façades are emptied from having a stone wall in front of them. Archeologists removed the Roman façade so that you can see where the curtains for the theater used to hang.
Let us go next inside the theater and I will explain the meaning of the orchestra to you.