Orange Roman Theatre
— — the wall the centuries forgot to bring down.
Not only on a wall.
“The best-preserved Roman theatre in Europe, holding its place in the small Provençal town that grew up around it. The back wall, three storeys of honey-coloured limestone a hundred metres across, is the only one in the Roman world to have survived nearly whole. Louis XIV is said to have called it the finest wall in his kingdom. Every summer the Chorégies d'Orange still fills the stone tiers, voices carrying the way they did when the theatre was new. Most afternoons it sits empty, the light moving across the wall as it has for two thousand years.
Orange Roman Theatre, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Théâtre antique d'Orange stands at the edge of Orange (population around 29,000) in the Vaucluse department of Provence, about 30 km north of Avignon. Built into the western slope of Saint-Eutrope hill in the early decades of the 1st century, under the reign of Augustus, it served the Roman colony of Arausio, founded in 35 BC for veterans of the Second Legion. The theatre and the nearby Triumphal Arch of Orange were jointly inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. Trains from Avignon TGV reach Orange in roughly fifteen minutes, with the theatre a short walk from the station through the older centre of town.
The scaenae frons, the great back wall behind the stage, measures 103 metres wide and 37 metres high, the only such Roman stage wall in the Western world to survive nearly intact. Three storeys of local limestone, weathered to a soft honey colour, once held marble columns, niches, and statues across its face. In the central niche stands a 3.5-metre statue of Augustus, reassembled from ancient fragments and placed in position in the 20th century. Louis XIV, after a visit in 1660, is said to have called it 'la plus belle muraille de mon royaume', the finest wall in his kingdom. The marble and stucco cladding are long gone; the bones are extraordinary.
The antique theatre has hosted opera and music for more than 150 years, with the modern Chorégies d'Orange festival tracing its origins to performances first staged here in the late 19th century. Reorganised in 1971 with a strictly operatic programme, it now draws audiences of around 8,000 to the stone tiers each July, a scale not far from the crowd Augustus's architects designed for. The acoustic survives because the back wall does; sound returns from it the way it did when the theatre was new. Outside the festival the site is open most days, with an audio guide. The town quiets in winter; the months around the festival are when the place is most fully alive.