Caracalla Festival 2026 at the Circus Maximus: the Teatro dell’Opera’s Summer

From June 29 to July 31, 2026 the summer season of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma took place at the Circus Maximus, and not at the Baths of Caracalla, where it has lived for almost 90 years. The reason is simple and not at all dramatic: the baths complex is undergoing restoration work, and for one whole season the festival moved to the other side of the hill, in the Murcia valley, inside the largest entertainment building that antiquity ever built. Capacity rose to about 6,000 seats. The program expanded accordingly.

I am writing after the season has ended, with the numbers and facts now fixed, and with the precise feeling that that summer is worth telling well even now that it is over. First of all because it really happened: five weeks of opera, dance, film in concert and symphonic-choral music in a bowl of grass and packed earth between the Aventine and the Palatine, with the audience seated where for eight centuries Romans screamed for the chariots. And then because the move was not a melancholy stopgap: it was one of those cases in which an organizational mishap produces, as a pure side effect, something nobody would have designed on paper.

The Circus Maximus remains the most misunderstood monument in the city. Whoever arrives for the first time walks past it, sees a long lawn with a few ruins at the end, and goes straight on toward the Colosseum convinced they haven't missed anything. It is exactly the opposite. That lawn is not a park: it is the empty volume of a building that held more people than any Italian stadium today, and the shape you walk on under your feet is still, millimeter by millimeter, the ancient shape. Putting an orchestra, a choir and a six-meter stage inside it was not a provocation. It was, if you like, a return home.

What follows lines everything up: the program evening by evening, how the decision to move came about, what the two places involved really are, how people got around and how you get around today in that part of the city, and what comes now, because the Teatro dell’Opera doesn't hibernate at the end of July, quite the opposite.

The 2026 program, evening by evening

The program was announced on March 10, 2026, at the same time as the appointment of the new artistic director of the Opera di Roma, Alessandro Galoppini. Tickets went on sale from Friday, March 13, with a declared price range between €15 and €170. All the shows started at 21:00, with the only exception of the closing evening, which started at 21:30.

June 29: Alessandro Barbero opens the season

The opening went to Francesco. Un santo scomodo, a lecture show drawn from the book of the same name by the historian Alessandro Barbero, on Monday, June 29 at 21:00. That an opera season opens with a historian talking about Saint Francis, alone, in front of thousands of people, is a choice worth looking at for what it is: a signal. The Teatro dell’Opera opened the five weeks at the Circus Maximus with an evening without orchestra, without sets, without costumes, entrusted entirely to a voice and a story.

Barbero has been, for years, the most interesting Italian case of mass popular history: lectures that fill squares, an enormous digital following, and a way of telling that holds together the rigor of the sources and the rhythm of the narrator. The book from which the evening is drawn presents a Francis of Assisi returned to his 13th century, far from the devotional holy card: an uncomfortable man for the Church of his time, radical, hard to tame. Bringing him to the Circus Maximus on June 29, the day of Saints Peter and Paul, that is, the patron saints' feast of Rome, was no accident of the calendar.

July 3 and 4: Gladiator in concert with Lisa Gerrard

Two evenings, Friday July 3 and Saturday July 4, both at 21:00, dedicated to the film-in-concert format: full screening of Ridley Scott's Gladiator, in Italian with English subtitles, and the soundtrack performed live by the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. On the podium Ludwig Wicki, chorus master Ciro Visco, executive production by Marco Patrignani. And on stage, live, Lisa Gerrard, that is, the voice that wrote that music together with Hans Zimmer and sang it in the original version.

Here the coincidence of place is so strong that it risks rhetoric, and it is best defused right away with a bit of precision. The film is about the Colosseum, not the Circus Maximus, and the two buildings served different purposes: the amphitheater for combat, the circus for chariot races. That said, the most memorable sequence of Gladiator, the reconstruction of the battle of Zama with the chariots entering the arena, is conceptually a chariot race, and the 19th- and 20th-century fascination with the ancient world passes right through there, from Ben-Hur onward. Hearing those notes in a valley where the quadrigas really raced, in front of an audience seated on the original slopes, produces a short circuit that no movie theater can replicate.

July 12, 15, 18, 22, 26 and 28: Aida

The heart of the season was Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, six performances: first performance on Sunday, July 12, repeats on the 15th, 18th, 22nd, 26th and 28th, all at 21:00. Stated running time about three hours and 20 minutes, with a first part of 90 minutes, an intermission of 30 and a second part of 80.

The staging is the one signed by Davide Livermore, who handles direction and choreographic movement, first presented at the Opera di Roma in January 2023 and brought here for the first time to a large open-air space. Around Livermore the usual team: sets by Giò Forma, costumes by Gianluca Falaschi, lighting by Fiammetta Baldiserri, video by D-Wok, collaborating director Chiara Osella, associate choreographer Carlo Massari. On the podium Daniele Callegari, chorus master Ciro Visco.

The cast rotated across the six dates, as is customary in a long open-air production. In the title role Elena Stikhina, making her debut with the Opera di Roma, and Yolanda Auyanet alternated. Amneris was entrusted to Angela Meade, a soprano taking on a mezzo-soprano role exceptionally, alternating with Valentina Pernozzoli. Radamès saw Ivan Magrì and Luciano Ganci alternate. Amonasro was Ernesto Petti, with one evening entrusted to Ludovic Tézier. Alex Esposito was Ramfis, Adriano Gramigni the King, Veronica Marini the priestess, Andrea Schifaudo the messenger.

A note on why Aida specifically. It is not a title chosen at random for a Roman open-air summer: it is the title of the Roman open-air summer. At the Baths of Caracalla, from the postwar period onward, Aida represented the very identity of the season, with the monumental sets and, for decades, real animals on stage in the triumphal march. Reviving it in the valley of the Circus Maximus, with Livermore's visionary and openly cinematic staging, was the most explicit way of saying that the season had moved but not stopped.

July 14: Roberto Bolle and Friends

On Tuesday, July 14, at 21:00, the gala Roberto Bolle and Friends, 90 minutes without intermission, ArteDanza production, light designer Valerio Tiberi. It is the event that for years has had the fastest sellout of the entire Roman summer season, and the reason is simple: it is the only occasion of the year, in Italy, to see in a row 11 pieces of different repertoire performed by stars who normally dance in 10 different theaters around the world.

The 2026 program alternated classical and contemporary with an almost didactic regularity. Caravaggio by Mauro Bigonzetti to music by Bruno Moretti from Monteverdi, with Nicoletta Manni and Bolle. The Grand Pas Classique by Victor Gsovsky to Auber, with Sae Eun Park and Paul Marque. Luminous by Andràs Lukàcs to Max Richter, with Tatiana Melnik and Bolle. Diana and Actaeon in the Vaganova version, with Margarita Fernandes and Antonio Casalinho. US by Christopher Wheeldon to Keaton Henson, lighting by Natasha Katz, costumes by Katherine Watt, with Bolle and Ildar Young. The pas de deux from Casse-noisette Compagnie by Jean-Christophe Maillot with Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko. Waves by Massimiliano Volpini to music by Davide Boosta Dileo and Erik Satie, solo by Bolle. Metaphor by Zoi Tatopoulos to M.E.S.H, with Ildar Young. The pas de deux from Le Parc by Angelin Preljocaj to Mozart, costumes by Hervé Pierre, with Sae Eun Park and Bolle. The pas de deux from Don Quixote by Petipa to Minkus, with Tatiana Melnik and Paul Marque. And to close Narcissus by Moses Pendleton to Host of Seraphim by Dead Can Dance, solo by Bolle.

With this last title a circle closes that few in the audience noticed: Host of Seraphim is a piece by Dead Can Dance, the group of Lisa Gerrard, that is, of the same voice that 11 days earlier, on the same stage, had sung live the soundtrack of Gladiator. Two distinct evenings, two largely different audiences, the same artist encountered twice within two weeks.

July 24 and 25: Romeo and Juliet

On Friday, July 24 and Saturday, July 25, at 21:00, dance returned as the protagonist with the Ballet Company of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma directed by Eleonora Abbagnato, performing Romeo and Juliet to music by Sergei Prokofiev, in the choreography of John Cranko. On the podium Ido Arad, sets and costumes by Jürgen Rose.

It is worth spending a couple of words on this production, because it is the title that most of the general audience ignored and that, technically, was the most demanding thing in the whole program. Cranko's version, created in Stuttgart in 1962, is one of the fundamental narrative ballets of the 20th century: a work that changed the way of telling a story with the body, giving the characters a physical acting that before the South African choreographer simply did not exist in that form. Bringing it outdoors, on a stage built for the occasion, with the big ensemble scenes of the conflict between the Veronese families, required the company to do work that the audience almost never sees.

July 31: Carmina Burana

Closing on Friday, July 31, the only evening starting at 21:30, with Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, 70 minutes without intermission. On the podium Wayne Marshall, chorus master Ciro Visco, with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and the participation of the Children's Chorus directed by Alberto de Sanctis. Soloists the soprano Alessandra Marianelli, the baritone Thomas Lehman and the countertenor Ivan Borodulin.

The element that made that evening different from the many performances of the Carmina you hear every year was the video installation signed by Anagoor, an Italian theater research collective among the most recognizable of the last 20 years, with a visual language that mixes theater, figurative arts and technology. Their images engaged in dialogue with the score instead of illustrating it, which is a substantial difference. The Carmina Burana are a 13th-century text, goliardic songs of students and wandering clerics about fortune, nature and desire, set to music by Orff in 1936: material that lends itself very easily to the postcard effect, and that here instead was treated with a certain harshness.

Midnight on July 31, lights on, 6,000 people heading back up toward Viale Aventino and toward the subway stop. The 2026 summer season of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma ends there.

Not only opera: the other evenings at the Circus Maximus

Alongside the opera-symphonic program, in the same weeks, the valley hosted a series of pop concerts that were not part of the Teatro dell’Opera's programming but shared the same stage and the same logistics. Riccardo Cocciante on July 6, Edoardo Bennato on July 20, Patti Smith on July 27.

Why the season moved to the Circus Maximus

The official reason is only one and hides nothing: the Baths of Caracalla are undergoing restoration work. A construction site on an archaeological complex of that size is not a coat of paint: it involves scaffolding, buffer areas, vehicles, storage, and above all it means there cannot be 6,000 people a day around the ancient walls for five weeks.

But there is a second level, more interesting, that deserves to be told. The relationship between the Teatro dell’Opera and the Baths of Caracalla has always been a relationship of continuous compromise with preservation. The summer season in the baths complex was born in 1937 in an era when nobody asked what decades of stages, grandstands, spotlights and vibrations did to a brick building from the 3rd century. They asked the question later, and starting in the 1990s the formula changed radically: the shows were suspended, then rethought, and came back with a much lighter stage setup, placed far from the ancient structures, with reduced capacities compared to the glory days.

The result is that the festival, over the last 30 years, has lived within a permanent constraint: a beautiful but tight space, with a limited number of seats and very little room to grow. When the restoration imposed the move, the Opera di Roma found itself holding, for one season, an inverted constraint: an almost unlimited space, with a capacity going up to about 6,000 seats, and the possibility of programming things that at Caracalla would never have made sense. A film projected on a big screen with live orchestra, for example, or a narrative ballet of that scale.

A curiosity about Caracalla Festival 2026 at the Circus Maximus: the Teatro dell’Opera’s Summer

2026 was not the first time the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma brought its summer season to the Circus Maximus. It was the third.

The first two were 2020 and 2021, for a completely different reason: the pandemic. The Baths of Caracalla, with their narrow paths and already compressed capacity, were unusable with the distancing rules in force at the time, and the theater moved to the valley precisely because space was abundant there. The 2020 season opened with a Rigoletto conducted by Daniele Gatti and directed by Damiano Michieletto. The 2021 one opened on June 15 with Verdi's Il trovatore, hosted Roberto Bolle and Friends from July 13 to 15, and saw Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov on stage on August 6 and 9.

This detail changes the way you read the summer of 2026. The stage at the Circus Maximus was neither an improvisation nor a gamble: it was a setup already tested twice, with acoustic and logistical problems already faced and solved five years earlier. When the move was announced in March 2026, the machine knew perfectly well what it was doing.

And there is a second curiosity inside the first. In 2020 and 2021 the valley filled at very reduced capacity, with chairs spaced apart and the audience counted one by one: whoever was there remembers something surreal, thousands of seats empty by obligation inside the largest entertainment building of the ancient world. In 2026, in the exact same place, capacity rose to about 6,000. The same place, six years apart, told two opposite stories about the relationship between people and public spaces.

The Circus Maximus: what that lawn really is

We have to start from a fact that puts everything else in order. The Circus Maximus measures about 600 meters in length by about 140 in width. It is not an estimate of how big it was: it is how big it is now, because the shape of the valley has remained exactly the same. Whoever walks in the area is walking inside the arena, and whoever sits on the grassy slopes sits on top of the seating tiers, buried by centuries of debris but still there underneath.

Estimates of the capacity vary a great deal depending on the ancient sources and modern scholars: they speak of a number between 150,000 and 250,000 spectators, the latter being the figure reported by Pliny the Elder. Even taking the most cautious figure, it remains an order of magnitude that no contemporary sports facility comes near. To give a concrete measure: Rome's Stadio Olimpico, when full, holds a little over 70,000.

How a day of races worked

The circus served one purpose only: chariot races. On the short side toward the Tiber, on the side of the Forum Boarium, there were the carceres, 12 starting gates arranged on a slightly oblique line to compensate for the different distances from the first turn. In the center ran the spina, the longitudinal barrier around which the chariots turned, with the metae at the two ends, the groups of cones that marked the turning points. A race was seven laps, counted with seven bronze eggs and seven dolphins that were lowered one at a time.

The horses ran for four teams, the factiones, identified by a color: the Reds, the Whites, the Blues and the Greens. Support for the colors was hereditary, organized, violent, and crossed all social classes: emperors had their team, and the public knew it. The factions were real companies, with stables, veterinarians, blacksmiths, trainers and a market of charioteers with figures that today we would call without hesitation the football transfer market.

Gaius Appuleius Diocles, the highest-paid man in history

The best documented case is that of Gaius Appuleius Diocles, a charioteer of Lusitanian origin, whose career is known thanks to a commemorative inscription of AD 146. The numbers are these: 4,257 races run, 1,462 victories, and total prize money of 35,863,120 sesterces. To put it in perspective, that sum was enough to pay the entire Roman army for a couple of months, or to supply the city of Rome with grain for a year.

The obelisks that are no longer there

On the spina, in the imperial era, two Egyptian obelisks stood, and both are still in Rome, in other places.

The first was brought by Augustus in 10 BC after the conquest of Egypt: it comes from Heliopolis, dates to Ramesses II, and today is in the center of Piazza del Popolo. The second arrived much later, in AD 357, wanted by Constantius II: it comes from Karnak, dates to Thutmose III, and is the tallest monolithic obelisk still standing in the world, over 30 meters. Today you see it in front of the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano.

What you see today

Of the ancient structure, on the surface, little remains but not nothing. On the southeast side, toward the curve, you see the remains of the hemicycle, with part of the masonry structures brought to light by excavations, and the base of what was the arch of Titus, erected in AD 81, a triumphal arch of which the foundations and some fragments remain.

Above that same area rises the Torre della Moletta, a medieval tower of the 12th century linked to the Frangipane family, who in the Middle Ages fortified the area using the ancient structures as ready-made foundations. It is the only vertical element of the valley, and it is an excellent reminder that this place was not abandoned after antiquity: it was constantly reused, as a quarry, as a vegetable garden, as countryside inside the walls, as an industrial area in the 19th century, before being cleared and regularized in the 1930s.

The Baths of Caracalla, the festival's historic home

To understand what a season away from Caracalla means you have to know what Caracalla is, and here too the misunderstanding is common: many think of an archaeological site among many, and instead it is one of the best preserved and most impressive complexes of all Roman antiquity.

The works began under Septimius Severus around AD 212 and the complex was inaugurated in 216 under his son, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus called Caracalla. The area occupied is about 13 hectares. The number of bathers it could host at the same time is estimated at around 1,800. The water came from a dedicated branch of the aqueduct, the Aqua Antoniniana, derived from the Aqua Marcia, and the system worked until 537, when the Goths cut the aqueducts during the siege: from that day the baths never worked again.

What you see today are very tall walls, largely stripped of the original marble and mosaic cladding. It is worth keeping this in mind when you look at the ruin: those red brick walls were entirely covered in colored marbles, with mosaic vaults, colossal statues and decorated floors. The most famous sculptures found there, the Farnese Bull and the Farnese Hercules, found in the 16th century during the Farnese excavations, are today in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. The mosaics with the athletes are in the Vatican Museums.

From 1937 on: the summer season

The summer opera season at the Baths of Caracalla was born in 1937, and the first title performed was Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, on August 1 of that year. The idea was to exploit the natural scenery of the calidarium as a backdrop, with an enormous capacity and popular prices.

The war interrupted everything, and the season resumed in the postwar period becoming, within a few years, a mass phenomenon and at the same time a piece of the international tourist imagery of Rome. It is the era of the Aidas with real horses and, in some editions, elephants in the triumphal march, of sets as tall as palaces, of huge crowds seated on improvised grandstands.

In the 1990s the bill for conservation arrived all at once. The vibrations, the loads, the impact of heavy sets on the ancient masonry led to the suspension of performances inside the complex. The return came with a radically different formula: stage moved, light structures, safety distance from the walls, reduced capacity. It is the formula with which the festival lived until the current restoration site.

The concert of the three tenors

If there is a single evening that made the Baths of Caracalla famous in the world outside the opera audience, it is that of July 7, 1990: the concert of José Carreras, Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, conducted by Zubin Mehta, on the eve of the World Cup final played in Rome.

That concert produced one of the best-selling classical music records of all time and invented, in effect, an entire format: the big open-air opera event conceived for world television. It had enormous consequences, not all happy, on the way opera was sold to the general public over the following 30 years. But it happened there, inside those walls, and whoever works today on the summer programming of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma has to reckon with it, one way or another.

Something nobody tells you about Caracalla Festival 2026 at the Circus Maximus: the Teatro dell’Opera’s Summer

The Circus Maximus, for an event with live orchestra, is an acoustically difficult place. Much more difficult than the Baths of Caracalla. And this is the thing that practically nobody talks about, because it is not news and because it requires explaining a bit of physics.

At the Baths of Caracalla the sound has surfaces to bounce off: the very tall walls of the calidarium behind the stage work as an enormous acoustic reflector, and the amplification system only has to supplement what the architecture already does. The feeling of natural sound you get in that place is not the technicians' doing: it is Caracalla's doing.

At the Circus Maximus there is nothing. The valley is open, the slopes are gently inclined and covered in grass, and grass absorbs. There is no back wall, there are no reflective surfaces, and the sound that leaves the stage simply goes away. This means the whole sound result depends on the system: diffusion towers distributed along the audience area, delay-line systems to compensate for the propagation time over long distances, and a sound direction job that in a theater would not be needed at all.

The practical consequence, for those who attended those evenings, is that position counted more than usual. Not in the trivial sense of being close to the stage: in the sense that the central sectors, aligned with the axis of the system, had a different result from the very lateral ones. Whoever listened to the Carmina Burana from the center of the audience area and whoever listened from the lateral end heard, technically, two somewhat different concerts. It is a physical limit, not an organizational flaw, and it is the price you pay for having 6,000 seats instead of 2,000.

My advice for visiting Caracalla Festival 2026 at the Circus Maximus: the Teatro dell’Opera’s Summer

The 2026 edition is over, so the advice concerns two different things: how to approach the valley today, if you go to walk there, and how to prepare for the next time an event occupies it, because it will happen again.

First the normal visit, which is the part that serves more people. The Circus Maximus is an open-air archaeological area and can be crossed freely. The almost universal mistake is entering it from the wrong side: whoever arrives from the subway stop or from Via dei Cerchi finds themselves immediately inside the lawn and no longer understands the dimensions, because they are inside the volume and lack the point of view. The right way is to go up first, look from above, and come down afterward.

The best point of view of all is the Orange Garden on the Aventine, which however looks toward the Tiber and toward St. Peter's, so it serves for the panorama but not for the circus. To see the valley in its entirety you have to go up along Via del Circo Massimo toward the Aventine side and stop at the upper edge, or, if you have a ticket for the Palatine, look out from the terraces of the imperial palaces on the opposite side: from there you see the whole track from above, exactly from the point from which the emperors watched it, because the palace had a direct view of the circus. It is one of the most underrated experiences in Rome.

On hours: the valley is completely without shade. In July and August, between 11 and 18, it is an oven, and it is not a matter of comfort but of safety. The right hours are early morning and the last hour before sunset, when the low light brings out the unevenness of the ground and you understand the shape of the facility much better than at noon.

I move on to the part about events, which applies to the next occasion. The first rule is to arrive early, and not for the reason you think. It is not a matter of lines at the turnstiles: it is that an evening at the Circus Maximus works well only if you arrive with time to do two things first, that is, have dinner without rushing and look around with the light still good. Whoever arrives at 20:50 for a show at 21:00 misses precisely the thing they came for, which is the place.

The second rule concerns the ground. The valley is packed earth and grass, with uneven spots, and after 5,000 people have walked on it it becomes dusty. The right shoes are those you would use for a walk in the countryside, not theater shoes. This is perhaps the most concretely useful advice I can give to someone coming from outside Rome and mentally preparing for an opera evening imagining a foyer.

The third concerns water and temperature. Rome in July, at 21:00, still has a high temperature, but after midnight, outdoors, in a valley near the river, the feeling changes noticeably. A three-hour-and-20-minute evening like Aida starts with heat and ends with cool air. A light layer to put on when the performance resumes after the intermission makes an enormous difference to the quality of the second half.

The fourth concerns the exit. 6,000 people leaving together toward a single subway stop produce what is predictable that they produce. The solution is not to go toward the subway: you walk back up toward the Aventine, or walk toward the Colosseum along Via di San Gregorio, which at night, empty and lit, is one of the most beautiful walks in the city. 20 minutes on foot and you are out of the flow, with an extra half hour of nighttime Rome that nobody factors in.

How to get there and get around

The Circus Maximus has a subway stop of the same name on line B, which exits practically on the edge of the valley. It is the simplest way and, on event evenings, also the most crowded.

The alternatives are all on foot and all pleasant. From the Colosseum you get there in 10 minutes walking along Via di San Gregorio, with the Palatine on your right and the Arch of Constantine behind you. From Piazza Venezia you go down through Via dei Fori Imperiali and then bend right. From the Aventine you go down from Via di Santa Sabina or from Clivo dei Publicii, and it is the most beautiful route of all, because you arrive from above and the valley opens up in front of you all at once.

From Testaccio and from the Pyramid of Cestius you go up along Viale Aventino in about 20 minutes. From Trastevere you cross Ponte Sublicio or Ponte Palatino and you are at the Forum Boarium, that is, at the northwest end of the circus, in barely a quarter of an hour.

On the car the discussion is short: on event evenings it makes no sense. The area is a limited traffic zone, parking is very scarce and traffic around the valley is modified. Whoever comes from outside Rome does much better to leave the car at a park-and-ride on line B and do the last kilometers by subway.

Tickets, prices and sectors

For the 2026 edition the range declared at the announcement went from €15 to €170, with sales open from March 13, 2026. It is a wide range, and it is worth understanding its logic, because it repeats in every edition of the summer season.

The high prices correspond to the close central sectors, those where the acoustic result is better and the view of the stage is frontal. The low prices correspond to the lateral and rear sectors, which in a space of that size are really far away. The difference in experience between the two extremes, at the Circus Maximus, is more marked than in any indoor theater: in a hall even the last row of the gallery hears well, in a valley 600 meters long it doesn't.

The advice is simple: for a show with voices, that is, for opera, it is worth investing in the sector, because the difference is heard. For an event where the weight is visual and amplified, like the film in concert, a cheaper sector penalizes much less. And for those on a tight budget who still want to be there, the lateral seats at €15 remain one of the cultural experiences with the best ratio between price and evening of the whole Roman summer.

Whoever is planning for future editions should keep an eye on the Teatro dell’Opera box office directly: the dates when sales open are communicated together with the announcement of the program, usually in early spring, and the titles that sell out first are always the same, that is, the dance gala and the first performances of the main opera.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely cited

The Circus Maximus is not only the largest entertainment building of antiquity: it is also the oldest in Rome, and by a good margin. Tradition traces its use back to an era before the Republic, when the Murcia valley was simply a flat valley floor between two hills, suited to races because it was already there, with no need to build it.

Livy tells that it was Tarquinius Priscus, one of the kings, who organized the first structured games there and assigned the seats to the different social classes. But the oldest memory the Romans associated with that place is another one, and it is the one that almost no guide tells in front of the lawn: the abduction of the Sabine women. According to the traditional account, Romulus organized games in honor of Consus, the Consualia, invited the neighboring peoples, and while the guests watched the show the Romans abducted their women. That account is set there, in that valley.

Here is the point that makes the fact worth citing: for the Romans the Circus Maximus was not a sports facility built at a certain moment, it was the place from which the city began. It precedes the Forum as an organized public space in collective memory, it precedes the temples, it precedes the walls. Every time an emperor rebuilt or enlarged it, he was not inaugurating something: he was intervening on the place of foundation.

There is a practical consequence of all this that directly concerns 2026. When the Teatro dell’Opera set up the stage in the valley, it did not occupy an empty space waiting for a function: it put a public spectacle back in the place that in Rome has been destined for public spectacles longer than any other, with a continuity of about 26 centuries. The last documented chariot race in the circus dates to AD 549, under the Gothic king Totila. Between that date and the 2026 stage there are almost 1,500 years of interruption, but the function of the place is the same.

The right photo to take at Caracalla Festival 2026 at the Circus Maximus: the Teatro dell’Opera’s Summer

The wrong photo is the one everyone takes, and it is understandable: lit stage, frontal framing from your own seat, phone telephoto pushed to the maximum. It returns a luminous rectangle in the middle of black and communicates absolutely nothing, because it eliminates the one thing that makes that evening different from any other, that is, the place.

The right photo is taken in the hour before the start, with the twilight still alive, and it is taken from above. The spot is the Aventine edge of the valley, along Via del Circo Massimo, where the ground rises and lets you look down. From there you keep in the frame everything that is needed: the curve of the facility, the audience area filling up, the stage at the far end, and behind the stage the profile of the Palatine with the arches of the imperial palaces. With the sky still dark blue and the lights already on, the contrast between the blue of twilight and the amber of the floodlights is the exact moment when that photograph works, and it lasts about 20 minutes.

For those who stay inside and still want a photo that tells something, the solution is to turn around. Instead of photographing the stage, you photograph the audience area seen from your own seat with the Palatine at the back: you get a human scale that no close-up of the stage can give. 6,000 heads in a valley, with a whole hill above.

Some important events that happened here in history

The valley of the Circus Maximus has a density of events that few places in the world can bear, and it is worth lining them up because they help understand why a show there carries a different weight.

The Consualia and the abduction of the Sabine women. In Roman tradition the episode that founds the city as a mixed community, and therefore as Rome proper, takes place during games celebrated in this valley. It is a mythical account, not a chronicle, but it is the account the Romans handed down.

The fire of AD 64. The great fire that devastated Rome under Nero broke out, according to Tacitus, from the shops built up against the Circus Maximus. From there it spread and burned a large part of the city for days. It is the event that changed Roman urban planning more than any master plan.

The arch of Titus in AD 81. Not the famous one of the Forum, but a second triumphal arch erected in the circus, dedicated to the victories in Judea. Its foundations were brought to light by excavations in the area of the hemicycle.

The obelisk of Augustus, 10 BC. The first Egyptian obelisk brought to Rome after the conquest of Egypt is raised on the spina. It marks, symbolically, Rome's entry into the ranks of the great Mediterranean empires.

The obelisk of Constantius II, AD 357. The tallest monolith ever transported from Egypt arrives in the circus. It is also one of the last great monumental interventions of imperial Rome.

The last races, AD 549. Under the Ostrogothic king Totila the games are held that the sources record as the last in the circus. After that the valley leaves the history of spectacles and returns to that of agriculture and mills.

The medieval fortification. Between the 12th and 13th centuries the Frangipane fortify the area making use of the ancient structures. The Torre della Moletta remains.

The excavations and the clearing of the area, 1930s. The valley, occupied by vegetable gardens, warehouses and industrial plants, is cleared and brought back to its current form. It is on that occasion that the Circus Maximus becomes legible again as a unified space.

The return of spectacles, from the postwar period to today. First public demonstrations and rallies, then the big concerts, then sports celebrations, finally, in 2020, 2021 and 2026, the summer season of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.

Who has passed through Caracalla Festival 2026 at the Circus Maximus: the Teatro dell’Opera’s Summer

First, who got on that stage in the summer of 2026, because the list is already remarkable in itself.

Alessandro Barbero, on June 29, with his Saint Francis. Lisa Gerrard, on July 3 and 4, with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Opera di Roma conducted by Ludwig Wicki. Roberto Bolle, on July 14, with Nicoletta Manni, Sae Eun Park, Paul Marque, Tatiana Melnik, Margarita Fernandes, Antonio Casalinho, Timofej Andrijashenko and Ildar Young. Davide Livermore as director of Aida, with Daniele Callegari on the podium and a cast that saw Elena Stikhina, Yolanda Auyanet, Angela Meade, Valentina Pernozzoli, Ivan Magrì, Luciano Ganci, Ernesto Petti, Ludovic Tézier and Alex Esposito alternate. The Ballet Company directed by Eleonora Abbagnato in Romeo and Juliet by John Cranko, with Ido Arad on the podium. Wayne Marshall in the Carmina Burana, with the collective Anagoor on the images, Ciro Visco chorus master for the whole season, and the soloists Alessandra Marianelli, Thomas Lehman and Ivan Borodulin. In the same weeks, on the same stage but on evenings outside the Opera's program, Riccardo Cocciante, Edoardo Bennato and Patti Smith.

But the real question, for a place like this, is wider, and concerns who passed through before.

In the valley of the Circus Maximus, over the last 50 years, some of the biggest mass gatherings of recent European history have been held. Genesis in 2007 filled the area with a crowd estimated at hundreds of thousands of people, in one of the most crowded concerts ever held in Italy. The Rolling Stones played here on June 22, 2014, Bruce Springsteen in 2016. The valley has been the site of the city's big sports celebrations, starting with the celebration of Roma's 2001 league title, and has been the setting several times for mass religious events, with hundreds of thousands of people gathered in front of a stage set up on the side of the Palatine.

And then, of course, there are the others: the emperors who watched from the height of the Palatine terraces, the charioteers like Diocles and like Scorpus, whom the sources describe as the true celebrities of the city, the four colors of the factions and their organized fans, and the more than 100,000 spectators who for eight centuries filled the tiers. The difference with today is only one of scale and noise: the function, as I was saying, has never really changed.

What is around

One of the reasons an evening in that valley is worth much more than the ticket is that the surrounding quadrant is the most beautiful in the city for a walk before or after.

On the northwest side, a short step away, is the Forum Boarium, that is, the ancient cattle market, with two of the best preserved temples in Rome, the round one called Hercules Victor and the rectangular one called Portunus. Next to it is Santa Maria in Cosmedin, with its Romanesque bell tower and, in the portico, the Mouth of Truth: I strongly recommend looking at it in the evening, when the line doesn't exist, because that mascaron is much more interesting when you don't see it through 200 people lined up for the photograph.

On the opposite side rises the Aventine with Santa Sabina, one of the most intact early Christian basilicas in Europe, with the wooden doors of the 5th century. Next to it the Orange Garden and, a little further on, the Rome Rose Garden, which looks right onto the valley and which in May is one of the most beautiful things in the city.

On the side of the Palatine you enter the central archaeological area, with the Palatine Museum, and in a few minutes you reach the Arch of Constantine and the Colosseum.

Going south you reach the Pyramid of Cestius and Testaccio, which is the right neighborhood for dinner before a show without spending historic-center prices. And continuing along Viale delle Terme di Caracalla you reach, in a quarter of an hour on foot, the Baths of Caracalla, that is, the festival's historic home.

The Roman summer around the festival

It must be said that the Teatro dell’Opera festival is never an island. In the same weeks, in the same quadrant of the city, other programs run that have a partly overlapping audience.

Right under the walls of the Baths of Caracalla, for example, the Jazz Image series, with free concerts, takes place, which is one of the most elegant ways of spending a summer evening in Rome without spending anything. Also in the baths area, every Friday night, the Muccassassina Summer Season moves in summer, which is a completely different kind of evening but is part of the same landscape.

A little further on, on the Appian Way, there is Utopia Open Air. In Testaccio, at the Città dell’Altra Economia, Testaccio Estate. On the Celio, the Village Celimontana with free jazz and swing every evening inside Villa Celimontana. And for those looking for great classical music in an archaeological setting, there is Santa Cecilia at the Basilica of Maxentius.

What happens now: the 2026-27 season and next summer

The closing on July 31 did not close the year of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma: it moved it indoors. The 2026-27 season at the Teatro Costanzi started in these days, and it is worth looking at, because it is very solid.

It began with Il barbiere di Siviglia in the OperaCamion format, the touring staging that the theater takes to the outskirts, with performances between September 12 and 20, 2026. On September 15 the curtain rose at the Costanzi on Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, conductor Emmanuel Tjeknavorian, directed by Claus Guth, on the program until September 23. From October 11 to November 1 comes Verdi's Falstaff conducted by Michele Mariotti with direction by Tatjana Gürbaca. On October 17, again at the Costanzi, Mariotti conducts a program dedicated to the two Petite Messe. From October 20 to 25, at the Teatro Nazionale, La vita nuda is staged. On October 26 the Costanzi hosts the dance evening Icone della danza.

On the summer front, the fixed point is that the return to the Baths of Caracalla depends on the progress of the restoration site, and the announcement of the summer program usually comes in spring, as happened in 2026 with the press conference of March 10. Whoever wants to organize in advance, therefore, keeps an eye on two moments: the presentation of the program between February and March, and the opening of sales a few days later.

What the 2026 experience has shown, in any case, is that the summer season of the Opera di Roma works in both homes. At Caracalla it has the acoustics, the intimacy and the brick wall that no scenography can imitate. At the Circus Maximus it has the space, the breathing room, and the possibility of programming formats that would not physically fit at Caracalla. They are two different things, and it would be a shame to consider one the reduced version of the other.

Quick questions

Did the Caracalla Festival 2026 really take place at the Baths of Caracalla?

No. The 2026 edition, from June 29 to July 31, took place entirely at the Circus Maximus, because the Baths of Caracalla complex is undergoing restoration work. The festival's name has remained tied to its historic home.

How many seats did the Circus Maximus have for the shows?

About 6,000, a capacity noticeably higher than that available at the Baths of Caracalla in recent years.

What were the main titles?

The opening on June 29 with Alessandro Barbero's Francesco. Un santo scomodo, Gladiator in concert with Lisa Gerrard on July 3 and 4, Verdi's Aida directed by Davide Livermore in six performances between July 12 and 28, Roberto Bolle and Friends on July 14, Romeo and Juliet in John Cranko's choreography on July 24 and 25, and Orff's Carmina Burana on July 31.

What time did the shows start?

At 21:00, except for the Carmina Burana of July 31, which started at 21:30.

How much did tickets cost?

The announced range went from €15 to €170, with sales open from March 13, 2026.

Will the festival return to the Baths of Caracalla?

The return depends on the completion of the restoration work, and the venues of future seasons are communicated together with the announcement of the program, usually in spring. The Circus Maximus formula, in any case, was not an isolated experiment: it had already been adopted in 2020 and 2021.

Is it worth going to the Circus Maximus even without a show?

Absolutely yes, and it's free. The area can be crossed freely. It is best to do it early in the morning or in the hour before sunset, and it is best to look at it first from above, from the Aventine edge or from the terraces of the Palatine, to understand its dimensions.

What should I wear for an evening there?

Closed, comfortable shoes, because the ground is earth and grass and becomes dusty, and a light layer to put on after midnight, when the temperature drops more than you expect.

What remains of the summer of 2026 is a precise feeling, and it concerns naturalness. A symphony orchestra playing Carl Orff in a bowl of grass between two hills, with a whole hill of imperial ruins as a backdrop and 6,000 people seated on buried tiers, could have been yet another operation of spectacularized archaeology. It wasn't, and the reason is that none of the elements was there to create atmosphere. The Palatine was not put behind the stage: it was already there. The valley was not dug out to hold the audience: it had held audiences for 26 centuries. The Teatro dell’Opera did not invent an evocative venue: it moved 800 meters because its home was under restoration. It is precisely this absence of scenographic intention that made everything work. Whoever comes back, the next time that valley fills for an evening of music, will do well to remember two banal things: arrive an hour early, and look around before the lights go out.

Frequently asked questions about Caracalla Festival 2026 at the Circus Maximus, the Teatro dell'Opera's summer

Did the Caracalla Festival 2026 really take place at the Baths of Caracalla?

No, the 2026 edition of the Caracalla Festival, from June 29 to July 31, took place entirely at the Circus Maximus, because the Baths of Caracalla complex is undergoing restoration work. The festival's name has remained tied to its historic home even though the shows took place elsewhere.

When did the festival take place?

The Caracalla Festival 2026 took place from June 29 to July 31, 2026, with the program announced on March 10, 2026 and tickets put on sale from March 13. All the shows started at 21:00, with the only exception of the closing evening, which started at 21:30.

How much did tickets cost?

For the 2026 edition of the Caracalla Festival the price range declared at the announcement went from €15 to €170. The high prices corresponded to the close central sectors, with better acoustic results and a frontal view of the stage, while the low prices corresponded to the more peripheral sectors of the Circus Maximus valley.

Where is the Circus Maximus and how do you get there?

The Circus Maximus, the festival venue in 2026, is in the valley between the Palatine and the Aventine and has a subway stop of the same name on line B that exits practically on the edge of the area. Alternatively you can walk there in 10 minutes from the Colosseum along Via di San Gregorio.

How many seats did the arena set up at the Circus Maximus have?

The capacity set up for the Caracalla Festival 2026 shows at the Circus Maximus was about 6,000 seats, noticeably higher than that allowed at the Baths of Caracalla, where the narrower paths limit the number of spectators per evening.

What time did the shows start?

All the Caracalla Festival 2026 shows started at 21:00, except the final evening of July 31, which started half an hour later, at 21:30. It is the standard time for the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma's open-air summer evenings.

Why did the festival move from the Baths of Caracalla to the Circus Maximus?

The official reason for the move is that the Baths of Caracalla are undergoing restoration work: a construction site on an archaeological complex of that size involves scaffolding, buffer areas and vehicles that are not compatible with 6,000 people a day for five weeks. It was not the first time the festival had moved: it had already happened in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic.

Article written by the editorial team of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private, Corporate and V.I.P. Tours and Experiences. Anyone who wants a guided walk among the Circus Maximus, the Aventine and the Baths of Caracalla, accompanied by a licensed guide who knows how to read the valley and its layers, can write from the TourLeaderPro contact page. For agencies and operators who build evening and music programs in Rome, combining a show and a visit in the same day, a consulting service is available in the area reserved for tour operators.

Planning a trip to Italy? The guides in English can be found on ItalyPlanner.com. To plan your days in Rome the reference is the page on the best things to do in Rome, while whoever has three full days and wants to fit an evening of music in as well will find a ready-made plan in the three-day itinerary in Rome.