Fodor's Expert Review Théâtre Antique

Directly up Rue de la Calade from Place de la République, are these ruins of a theater built by the Romans under Augustus in the 1st century BC. It's here that the noted Venus of Arles statue, now in the Louvre, was dug up and identified. The theater was once an entertainment venue that held 10,000 people, and is now a pleasant, parklike retreat that's used as a site for the Festival d'Arles, in July and August, and for Les Recontres d'Arles (Photography Festival) from early July to mid-September. Only two columns of the amphitheater's stage walls, one row of arches, and vestiges of the original stone benches remain, as much of the theater's fine local stone was repurposed in early Christian churches.