SCULPTURAL AND PAINTED DECORATIONS

In the 1930s, the orchestra was described as follows by the archaeologist Giorigio Rosi: “…paved with rare marble of many colours, laid in a regular geometric pattern”; and he said that the walls of the pulpitum: “must have been clad in polychrome marble: the surfaces with white cipollino veined with greenish hues, the moulding with white-veined red African marble..”. We must therefore imagine the striking impact it would have had on anyone who saw it to see the interiors clad in prized marbles from Greece, Asia Minor and North Africa. Moreover, the architectural decoration must have been completed with groups of bronze statues, also of considerable dimensions, as the fragment of a male face shows; this is held, along with other artefacts from the Theatre, at the MAR-Regional Archaeological Museum in Aosta. Indeed, we must not forget that for the Romans the theatre was a place of great communicative power where they could spread and consolidate the desired political and cultural values of the Empire.