Roman Amphitheatre of Sutri site features

Sutri's amphitheatre was not built up out of the ground but cut down into it: the whole ellipse, tiers and all, is hewn from the tuff. It is elliptical in plan and measures about 49 by 40 metres, and it is the most striking structure in a town whose ancient remains are its main draw.

What that means in practice is unusual. In a built amphitheatre the outer ring is masonry, and masonry gets quarried -- which is why so many survive as half a building. Here there was nothing to take away. The seating banks are the hill, worked back into steps; the arena is the floor that was left at the bottom. The whole thing sits in the Parco dell'Antichissima Città di Sutri, seven hectares of naturalistic and archaeological ground at the foot of the town.

The rest of the cluster

The amphitheatre is one of several rock-cut things here, and the same tuff explains all of them. There is an Etruscan necropolis of dozens of rock-cut tombs. In the cliffs facing the town on the south is the rock-cut church of the Madonna del Parto, developed out of one of those tombs -- and, by some scholars' reading, a Mithraeum first, the cult site of pagan soldiers, incorporated into the crypt. There is the catacomb of San Giovenale. On the southern side of the town, remains of the ancient city walls in rectangular blocks of tuff, with rock-cut sewers in the cliffs below them.

The Duomo is Romanesque in origin and largely modern in fabric; of the medieval building the belltower of 1207 survives, and the crypt from the Lombard period, with seven naves divided by twenty columns of different origins. The Museo di Palazzo Doebbing opened on 14 September 2018, and Villa Savorelli stands above the town.

An amphitheatre with nothing added

The full ellipse -- arena and all the seating tiers -- cut from the living tuff, about 49 by 40 metres. No blocks were laid, so none could be removed.

The arena in use

On the evening of 17 September a fireworks display and a torchlight procession are held inside the amphitheatre, in the week of 16 September, the dies natalis of the town's patron Santa Dolcissima. In the last weeks of July the Mercatantia, a three-day medieval festival from Friday to Sunday, takes over the archaeological park of the amphitheatre. The Tuscia Viterbese Festival Barocco also plays here in summer, and has brought musicians of the standing of Severino Gazzelloni and Gustav Leonhardt to the town.

The seven-hectare park

The amphitheatre sits in the Parco dell'Antichissima Città di Sutri, an extensive naturalistic and archaeological park running for seven hectares at the foot of the inhabited centre.

The Madonna del Parto

In the cliffs opposite the town on the south: a church cut out of one of the area's Etruscan tombs, which some scholars read as having been a Mithraeum, the cult site of pagan soldiers, incorporated into the crypt.

The tuff walls and the rock-cut sewers

On the south side of the town, remains of the ancient city walls in rectangular blocks of tuff, with sewers cut into the cliffs below them.

The Lombard crypt

Under the Duomo: seven naves divided by twenty columns of different origins, from the Lombard period, with the belltower of 1207 the other medieval survival of a church otherwise largely rebuilt.

The living nativity in the necropolis

At Christmas the town stages its presepe vivente in the rock-cut necropolis.