Sikyon (Kiato)

SIKYON (Kiato), ancient Corinth / Argolis/ Achaea, modern Greece.

COORDINATES: 37º59’02.97’’N // 22º42’40.88’’E

TIPOLOGY: Greek theatre. Urban.
DATE: First half III B.C.
TRANSFORMATIONS: Last I B.C. or first I A.D. the scene building was rebuilt.
CAPACITY: 7.000 ? spectators.

CAVEA: 125 m. diameter. Facing north-east. Nine rows of seats survives in ima cavea but the total number of rows was about 60, most of which were cut from the rock..

ORCHESTRA: 24,3 m. diameter. In proedria there are honor seats.
STAGE BUILDING: Proscaenium was 3,25 m. high; the Hellenistic stage 23,7 x 3 m. but was transformed in roman times. Stage building was 24,5x 12,1 m.
LOCATION: Ancient Sikyon is about 4 klm. from modern Kiato, and about 17 klm. north-west from Corinth.

MY BEDSIDE TABLE: Lange, Judith; Bosnakis, Dimitris; “Ancient theatres”. Athens, Itanos, 1996. // Maximos, Platon; “Ancient Hellenic theatres”. Athens, 1998. // Maximos, Platon; “Fair competition: ancient stadia – ancient theatres”, Athens,  , 2004. // Mee, Christopher; Spawforth, Anthony; “Greece. Oxford archeological guides”. Oxford University Press, 2001. // Arias, Paolo Enrico; “Il teatro greco fuori di Atene”. Firenze, G.C. Sansoni, 1934. // Cailler, Pierre; Cailler, Diky; Bettex, Ivan; “Les Théatres gréco-romains de Grèce”. Laussane. Style. 1966. // Sear, Frank; “Roman theatres: an architectural study”. Oxford University Press, 2006. // Ciancio Rossetto, Paola; Giuseppina Pisani Sartorio (eds); “Teatri Greci e Romani: alle origini del linguaggio rappresentato”. Rome: SEAT, 1995.

OUT OF PRINT: Sikyon has always broke my breath. In two ways. First, it was one of those theatres I always wanted to visit. The other reason... there is a film by Akira Kourosawa in which the Japanese director show us seven dreams that he had in his life, in one of them a group of polar expeditionary are in the meddle of a storm, they can hardly walk, by effects of cold and fatigue, their slowness is extreme, and the interpretation and the film is so good that me, like spectator, when I saw the film I started to have trouble with my breath... that what I felt in Sikyon´s ancient theatre, problems to breath, a mixture of pleasure and fatigue... not good to visit a greek theatre with forty degrees, at two in the afternoon, in July...