The theatre is located within the walls of ancient Demetrias, on the site known as “Sta Dontia” (meaning “At the Teeth”, because of the surviving pillars of the ancient aqueduct passing next to the theatre), near the neighbourhood of “Nees Pagasses” in Volos Municipality. The theatre was built simultaneously with the foundation of the city by the Macedonian king Demetrios Poliorcetes, in 294-292 BC. The current situation of the theatre, stripped of its stone seats, was created after the final abandonment of the building in the mid-4th c. AD, while the stage building belongs to the Roman period. Despite the extensive stone-robbing which started on the abandonment of the theatre, the monument preserves the characteristic tripartite form of Hellenistic theatres: the stage building, the orchestra and the cavea with the epitheatre. Four phases have been identified to date for the stage building, with another three or four in the area of the cavea, although they cannot yet be dated accurately and those of each area definitively correlated to each other. The location of the theatre in the city is not accidental. The theatre was built opposite the Palace of the Macedonian Kings and below the hill on which stood the Heroon of the Archegetes and Builders of the city of Demetrias. It has been argued that the theatre served also the needs of a Heroon.

Babis G. Intzesiloglou Archaeologist