Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

The Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre Silvano Toti is inside Villa Borghese, with its main entrance at Largo Aqua Felix, toward Piazza di Siena: those arriving by metro get off on line A at Flaminio or Spagna and cross the park on foot in a good quarter of an hour, those who prefer the tram take tram 19 or tram 3 to Viale delle Belle Arti and walk up from Valle Giulia. The stage entrance, reserved for the companies, is on Via Valle Giulia. Anyone with walking difficulties reaches Largo Pablo Picasso by car, where a barrier opens an easier access, and from there to the theater there are about 100 meters of flat avenue: Largo Pablo Picasso itself is the closest parking for everyone else. The box office is on Viale Pietro Canonica and opens Tuesday to Sunday from 17:00 to 19:00, and on show days until the start of the performance. In September and October on Saturday and Sunday it opens earlier, at 16:00, and closes at 18:30, while on Monday it opens only when there is a show, from 18:00. The theater's infoline is 338 910 4467, active in the months of the season. Tickets are bought at the box office or online through the authorized reseller that the theater indicates from time to time on its official channels: prices, calendar and subscription formulas change every summer and need to be checked before setting out, because the most requested performances sell out weeks in advance.

The theater is one of the places in the great Villa Borghese, the 80-hectare park that the Italian State bought in 1901 and gave to the Municipality of Rome in 1903 so that it would remain open to the public.

What the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome is

It's a circular, open-air, wooden Elizabethan theater, built in 2003 inside a Roman public park on the model of Shakespeare's London Globe. The correct definition is not copy: it's philological reconstruction, that is a building designed by applying what is known about English theater halls of the late 16th century, without having the original drawings, which were never handed down. The result is an oak ring 10 meters high where the audience surrounds the actor on three sides and some of the spectators watch standing, as happened at Southwark four centuries ago.

The structure was built by the Municipality of Rome on the basis of an initial idea by Gigi Proietti and with the funding of the Silvano Toti Foundation, created by the Toti family in memory of the businessman and patron from whom the theater took its first name. The inauguration took place in 2003 with a Romeo and Juliet directed by Proietti, and fell in the year Villa Borghese was celebrating its first century as a city park: the theater was therefore also born as a gesture of ideal twinning with London.

Why the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome is a rare case in Italy

Italy is full of open-air theaters, and almost all are ancient or 19th-century. A wooden Elizabethan ring, built from scratch, functioning and with an annual season, is in Italy a unicum. The natural comparison is not with the Verona Arena or with Roman theaters reused in summer, but with the few similar reconstructions scattered around the world, from the London Globe reopened in 1997 to the American and German replicas. Plainly put: the Roman Globe holds up against the London one in the spectator's experience, and loses on philological research, because in London the reconstruction was born inside a scientific project of 20 years. Here the bet was another, and in our judgment it succeeded: to bring Shakespeare spoken in Italian before an audience that would not usually go to drama theater.

How to get to the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

By metro and tram

Metro line A serves the park from two opposite sides. From Flaminio you go up through the Pincio or along Viale dell'Orologio and cut across toward Piazza di Siena: 20 minutes at a normal pace, slightly uphill at the start. From Spagna you exit directly onto Viale del Muro Torto and enter from Porta Pinciana, a shorter route but with some escalators that work intermittently in the evening. Tram 19, the longest line of the Roman network, and tram 3 share the stretch along Viale delle Belle Arti: getting off there you enter from the Valle Giulia side, which is also the coolest way to arrive on July evenings, because that side of the park is thickly wooded.

By car, taxi and two wheels

The reference parking is Largo Pablo Picasso, about 100 meters from the theater. On show nights it fills up early, because it also serves the audience of the other spaces in the park. Taxis enter without problems as far as Largo Aqua Felix and short stops to drop off passengers are tolerated. For scooters Viale dell'Uccelliera is better, on the side of the zoological garden. Operational advice: if you're a large group, get dropped off at Porta Pinciana and do the last 10 minutes on foot, because bus maneuvering inside the park is forbidden and the authorized stop points change with seasonal ordinances.

Accessibility of the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

Easier access goes through Largo Pablo Picasso, where a barrier allows the entry of cars of visitors with disabilities. The theater is on a single level as far as the stalls are concerned, while the three tiers of boxes are reached by wooden stairs and walkways: wheelchair users find a place in the stalls and this must be flagged when buying, because the reserved places are few and the stalls, in the classic configuration, are standing. The approach road from the parking is asphalted and flat. For confirmation of the places available in the current season it's best to call the box office: the arrangement of the stalls changes from production to production.

Tickets, box office and hours of the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre

The physical box office opens on Viale Pietro Canonica in the afternoon, Tuesday to Sunday from 17:00 to 19:00, extended until the start of the show on performance days. In September and October, when the days get shorter, the weekend shifts to an earlier schedule, from 16:00 to 18:30. On Monday the ticket office stays closed except when a performance is on the bill, and in that case it opens at 18:00.

On advance sales the practical rule is simple: the total capacity comes close to 1,200 seats and on peak evenings it sells out. Buying in advance avoids the line at the entrance, which on days of great turnout stretches along the avenue with the audience standing under the still-high sun. On prices I make no predictions: they vary by section, by day of the week and by production, and the official price list is the one the theater publishes at the start of the season. On site, the sections are distinguished into standing stalls, numbered boxes on the three levels and seats. The best value is the first tier of side boxes near the proscenium, which costs less than the central seat and gives a much more interesting view of the stage.

The London model: Shakespeare's Globe and its three lives

To understand what the building in Villa Borghese is, you have to know what it imitates. The original Globe was built in Southwark, on the south bank of the Thames, in 1599, by the company of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, of which William Shakespeare was a partner, actor and house playwright. It was a wooden ring that could hold about 3,000 people, an enormous figure for the time, with the open yard and the boxes covered by a straw roof.

The fire of 1613 and the end of the theater

On June 29, 1613, during a performance of Henry VIII, a blank cannon shot set fire to the straw roofing and the theater burned. It was rebuilt the following year, in 1614. The definitive closure came for political and religious reasons, with the Puritan season that ended London theater activity, and the building was demolished around 1644. Of the Globe what remained were the texts, a few engravings and indirect testimonies: no design, no archival plan, no construction drawing. That is why every modern reconstruction is, technically, a reasoned hypothesis.

Sam Wanamaker and the reconstruction of 1997

The reopening of the London Globe is owed to an American actor and director, Sam Wanamaker, who in 1970 founded the Shakespeare Globe Trust and spent the last 23 years of his life raising funds. The new theater opened in June 1997, about 230 meters from the original site, designed with English oak and mortise-and-tenon joints, without structural steel, and with the first straw roof authorized in London after the great fire of 1666. Modern fire regulations have reduced the capacity to about 1,400 spectators, of whom just under 700 standing in the yard. The Roman Globe was born six years later, in 2003, and takes from that experience the fundamental principle: the audience that surrounds the actor and lights him with the same light.

The architecture of the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome, piece by piece

The oak wood structure

The whole building is in oak wood from managed and reforested forests. The choice is not decorative: wood works with humidity, expands in summer and shrinks in winter, and gives the voice a warm acoustic response that concrete doesn't give. Anyone sitting in the lower boxes feels the floor vibrate when the stalls move. It's the most beautiful flaw of this theater, and it has to be factored in: here there is no acoustic neutrality of a modern hall, there is a sounding board that breathes.

The stage and the relationship with the audience

The stage is covered and projects toward the open stalls, which surround it on three sides. This geometry changes the actor's craft: there is no fourth wall, no darkness in the hall, no privileged point to act from. The Elizabethan actor spoke to an audience whose faces he could see, and the Shakespearean text is written for that condition, with asides, direct apostrophes, monologues addressed to someone. At the Roman Globe that mechanism still works, and it's the reason a spectator used to the Italian-style hall often comes out thrown.

The standing stalls: the groundlings of Villa Borghese

The stalls hold up to 415 spectators standing. In Elizabethan slang they were the groundlings, the popular audience who paid a penny and stayed in the yard under the sky. They are the cheapest seats and, for those who can stand two hours, the best: you're a meter from the proscenium, you hear the actors' breath, you take part physically. From the stalls you access the boxes, connected to each other by walkways.

The three tiers of boxes

The boxes run on three levels along the whole ring and are covered. The first tier is the one I recommend: close, protected from a possible downpour, with an oblique view of the stage that makes the depth of the scene readable. The third tier, high up, is the right place to understand the building as a whole and for photography, but requires good eyes for faces. Connections between sections are by wooden stairs and walkways, which on packed nights become a small exercise in patience.

The tuff floor and the copper roof

The paving of the stalls is made of tuff blocks laid dry, a solution that gives the feel of packed earth without turning to mud at the first rain. Tuff, the Roman raw material par excellence, is also the only truly local element of a building that is otherwise entirely English in conception. The roof that covers boxes and stage is clad in copper shingles: in London they rebuilt the straw, in Rome the choice fell on a material that oxidizes over the years and turns green, and that withstands the July sun better.

The numbers of the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

10 meters of height, 23 meters of inner diameter, 33 of outer diameter, 100 meters of outer circumference, 1,206 seats in total of which 415 standing in the stalls. The construction took three months. These are figures worth keeping in mind as you enter: an inner diameter of 23 meters means that no spectator is more than a dozen meters from the center of the stage, and it's this compression of space that produces the effect everyone talks about on the way out.

Gigi Proietti, the founder of the theater

Gigi Proietti was born in Rome on November 2, 1940 and died in Rome on November 2, 2020, the day he turned 80. Stage, film and television actor, voice actor and director, he was the quintessential Italian showman of the second half of the 20th century. To him is owed the initial idea of the Villa Borghese theater, which he directed artistically from the 2003 inauguration until his death: 17 seasons.

From the Brancaccio to Villa Borghese

Before the Globe, Proietti had founded at the Teatro Brancaccio a workshop of stage exercises from which many actors who later became well known emerged. The Globe is the natural continuation of that work: a school disguised as a summer season, where young companies got their hands on Shakespeare in front of 1,200 people. Anyone who followed the seasons knows the level was uneven, and Proietti knew it better than anyone: it was a workshop theater, and the workshop is there to make mistakes.

Edmund Kean, the role of a lifetime

The show that tied him more than any other to Elizabethan theater is Edmund Kean, a monologue by Raymund FitzSimons devoted to the great English Shakespearean actor: Proietti directed and played it from 1989 and revived it until 2017. Kean, born in London in 1787 and died in Richmond in 1833, had revolutionized the way of acting Shakespeare with an impulsive, passionate style, opposed to the controlled elegance of John Philip Kemble. His consecration came on January 26, 1814 with the Shylock of The Merchant of Venice at Drury Lane. His last work was an Othello at Covent Garden on March 25, 1833, during which he collapsed on the stage. Bringing that character inside a reconstructed Globe is one of those coincidences that theater knows how to build better than life.

The naming for Gigi Proietti

On November 3, 2020, the day after his death, the mayor of Rome Virginia Raggi and the Silvano Toti Foundation announced the intention to name the theater after Proietti too. The name Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre Silvano Toti has been operative since the 2021 summer season, confirmed at a press conference on June 7, 2021 together with that year's program. It was not a plaque: it was recognition that the building, without that idea and those 17 years of direction, would not exist.

Silvano Toti and the foundation that paid for the theater

The first name of the building comes from Silvano Toti, Roman businessman and patron, and from the Foundation his family created to remember him. The financing model deserves a note, because in Italy it is less common than you might think: the land and public ownership are the Municipality of Rome's, the construction money came from a private party, the artistic management is entrusted to a company, Politeama Srl. Three parties, three distinct roles. When someone describes the Globe as a municipal theater they say something half true. When they describe it as a private theater, they are wrong in the same way.

The repertoire of the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

Under Proietti's direction, Elizabethan tragedies and comedies were staged, revisited in a modern key, with particular success among young audiences. The list of historic productions includes Romeo and Juliet, Love's Labour's Lost, Othello, Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew and The Tempest.

Romeo and Juliet, the show that opened the theater

It was the inaugural title of 2003, directed by Proietti. The choice was obligatory and at the same time shrewd: the most popular text in the canon, the one the audience thinks it knows, put in a space that forces you to hear it again. In the Elizabethan configuration the balcony scene loses the postcard effect and becomes what it is in the text, a whispered conversation a few meters from hundreds of people keeping silent.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The comedy that best fits this building, for a banal reason: the text is about a night forest and the theater is inside a park, with real trees visible above the wooden rim. In the July performances it happens that a hoopoe or a seagull crosses the scene late on cue. It can't be programmed, and for me it's the most beautiful moment of the Roman theater summer.

Othello, Richard III, King Lear

The three great tragedies of the repertoire are also the toughest test in a space with no darkness in the hall. Richard III works very well, because the protagonist speaks directly to the audience from the first line and here that audience looks him in the eye. Othello suffers more, because its mechanism rests on intimacy and the unsaid. King Lear, with the storm scene under the open sky, lives or dies depending on the weather.

The comedies: The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, Love's Labour's Lost

The comic side of the repertoire is the one that brought the youngest audience to the Globe, and also the one that drew the harshest criticism from purists, because of the loose translations and the productions that wink at the present. Shakespeare has survived far worse things than a line in Romanesco, and an 18-year-old laughing at Beatrice and Benedick in a wooden ring has learned more than one yawning over a philological edition.

The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest

The Merchant of Venice brings in the thorniest question of the canon, the figure of Shylock, and every production is forced to take a position. The Tempest, a final and testamentary text, ideally closes the cycle: an island, a magician who gives up magic, an epilogue addressed to spectators asked to applaud in order to free the protagonist. In a theater where the spectators are lit as much as the actor, that epilogue hits as in no other hall. For those who want to broaden their view of Roman drama theater, the natural comparison is with the seasons of the Teatro Sistina and of the Ambra Jovinelli, which keep to an entirely different repertoire.

The artistic direction after Proietti

Since summer 2022 the artistic direction has been entrusted to Nicola Piovani, Roman composer born on May 26, 1946, Oscar winner in 1999 for the soundtrack of Life Is Beautiful. The choice of a musician at the head of a theater of words is less strange than it seems: the Shakespearean verse is rhythmic matter, and the iambic pentameter is a score before it is a meaning. Anyone who also follows the programs of the Rome Opera House or the Teatro Olimpico will recognize in this appointment a consolidated Roman trend, that of entrusting drama spaces to directors who come from music.

The Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre Archive and Roma Tre University

In 2020 the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre Archive was inaugurated, born from the collaboration between Politeama Srl, which holds the exclusive artistic management of the theater, and the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures of Roma Tre University. The catalog can be consulted online and collects, for every show since the first season of 2003, complete filmed recordings, photographs, sketches, director's notes, press reviews, statistical data, critical studies and interviews.

The materials are protected by copyright and are consulted at the Department's Multimedia Center, at Via del Valco di San Paolo 19, during opening hours. It's a resource open to students, teachers and citizens, and remains the best way to study the evolution of Italian Shakespearean directing of the last 20 years. Few Italian theater institutions have done as much with their own memory: usually the sketches end up in a cellar and the videos on a disk nobody can read anymore.

What an evening at the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome is like

What to bring

A light sweatshirt, even in July: the park at midnight drops many degrees compared with the center, and with the open stalls you feel it. A folding cushion if you've taken the boxes, because the benches are wood and two hours make themselves felt. Mosquito repellent, which in Villa Borghese in August is not a hypothetical. Water, because refreshment points are few and lines form at intermission. Anyone who arrives in heels on a floor of dry-laid tuff finds out at their own expense.

When it's best to go

The right period is from late June to the first half of October, with two clearly better windows: the end of June, when the evenings are still long and the sultry heat hasn't arrived, and the second half of September, when the heat has broken and the audience thins out. August is the worst month for the climate and the best for finding a seat at the last minute. In case of light rain the show goes on and those in the stalls get wet: the decision on suspension belongs to the management, and the refund follows the conditions stated on the ticket.

The Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome with kids

The theater is suitable from age 10 up, with a few exceptions for the more physical comedies, which amuse even earlier. Below that threshold the problem is not the content but the length and the time: a show that starts at 21:00 ends after 23:00. For a family day in the park, the afternoon fills easily with the Bioparco or the Secret Gardens of Villa Borghese, and the evening ends here.

Length, intermission, house rules

Productions generally last between two hours and two and a half hours, with an intermission. Video and photo recording during the show is not allowed, as in any theater. Before and after, with the curtain closed, photographing the building is normally tolerated. There is no cloakroom in the classic form, so it's best to travel light. Shows start on time and latecomers enter at the first suitable scene change, not before: with standing stalls and the audience a meter from the actors, an out-of-time entrance shows.

What is around the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

Within a 10-minute walk the park offers more than an evening can cover. The Galleria Borghese, with the Berninis and the Caravaggios, requires booking with limited entries and is the strongest museum of the area. The Casa del Cinema, in the Casina delle Rose, programs screenings and meetings, and in summer opens the Ettore Scola arena with free admission. The Carlo Bilotti Museum, in the former Orangery, holds a group of works by Giorgio de Chirico. Toward the south the park fades into the Pincio and its terrace over the Popolo, which at eight in the evening, with the low light, is worth the detour before going into the theater.

Anyone looking instead for a comparison with the historical heritage of the other Rome, that of the palaces and collections, finds in the National Museum of Palazzo Venezia an exact counterpart: there the Italian Renaissance preserved in display cases, here the English theater contemporary of that Renaissance, stood back up and put back to work.

A curiosity about the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

The curiosity almost nobody knows concerns the construction time: the building was put up in three months. Three months for an oak ring 33 meters in outer diameter, with three tiers of boxes, walkways, a covered stage and a copper roof. It's a datum that looks like a transcription error and is instead the correct datum, and it is explained by the construction technique: English-tradition timber carpentry works with prefabricated elements assembled on site, not with pours that have to cure. The pieces arrive already cut and are assembled.

The second, related curiosity concerns the calendar. The theater opened in 2003, the year Villa Borghese celebrated 100 years since the transfer to the Municipality of Rome, which happened in 1903 after the purchase by the State in 1901. The Roman Globe was therefore born as a birthday present to a park, and as an ideal twinning between Rome and London, the two cities that today own a functioning Globe. If you put together the speed of the work and the anniversary, you understand that the inauguration date was not negotiable: they had to open in 2003, period. The rest was organized around that deadline.

Then there is a material detail worth the curiosity of those who look: under your feet, in the stalls, there isn't wood but tuff, the volcanic stone Rome has been built with for 27 centuries. An English theater resting on the Roman material by definition. I don't think it was conceived as a symbol, but it works very well as one.

Something nobody tells you about the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

That there is no faithful copy of Shakespeare's Globe, and that neither of the two reconstructions standing today, neither the London one of 1997 nor the Roman one of 2003, can claim to be. Of the original theater no designs were handed down. What we know comes from a few panoramic engravings of London, from a second-hand drawing of another Elizabethan theater, from construction contracts for similar buildings and from the excavations that in 1989 brought back to light a portion of the foundations. Everything else is critical reconstruction, that is, motivated hypothesis.

The two reconstructions, consequently, differ from each other on several choices: the roofing, the dimensions, the number of pillars of the proscenium, the shape of the musicians' gallery. Anyone arriving at Villa Borghese convinced they are seeing Shakespeare's theater has to make peace with the idea of seeing a modern, argued reading of what that theater might have been. Which, if you think about it, is exactly how Shakespeare is staged: no production is the text, every production is a hypothesis.

The second thing nobody says concerns management. The theater is public as land and as property, private as original financing, and entrusted to a company, Politeama Srl, for the artistic part. This threefold nature explains why the programming doesn't follow the logic of the resident theaters and why the seasons are concentrated in the warm months: without a covering over the stalls, winter operation is impossible. Anyone who wonders why such a beautiful theater stays closed from November to April already has the answer by looking up.

Frequently asked questions about the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

What is the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre and where is it in Rome

The Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre is a circular, open-air, wooden Elizabethan theater, built in 2003 inside Villa Borghese on the model of Shakespeare's London Globe. The main entrance is at Largo Aqua Felix, toward Piazza di Siena, while the stage entrance is on Via Valle Giulia and the box office on Viale Pietro Canonica.

How do you get to the Globe Theatre by public transport

You get to the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre by metro line A, stops Flaminio or Spagna, and then on foot through Villa Borghese. From Flaminio you go up through the Pincio or along Viale dell'Orologio in about 20 minutes. From Spagna you exit onto Viale del Muro Torto and enter from Porta Pinciana, a shorter route but with some escalators.

When does the Globe Theatre box office open

The physical box office of the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre opens on Viale Pietro Canonica from Tuesday to Sunday, from 17:00 to 19:00, extended until the start of the show on performance days. In September and October on the weekend the schedule moves earlier to 16:00-18:30. On Monday the ticket office stays closed except when there is a performance on the bill.

Who founded the theater and who directs it today

The Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre was conceived by Gigi Proietti, who directed it artistically from the 2003 inauguration until his death in 2020, for 17 seasons. Since summer 2022 the artistic direction has been entrusted to the Roman composer Nicola Piovani, Oscar winner in 1999 for the soundtrack of Life Is Beautiful.

What shows can you see at the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre

At the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre, Elizabethan tragedies and comedies are staged, revisited in a modern key, with a historic repertoire that includes Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew and The Tempest.

What is worth bringing for an evening at the Globe Theatre

For an evening at the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre it's worth bringing a light sweatshirt, because the park at midnight drops many degrees compared with the center, with the open stalls. A folding cushion is also useful for those who take a place in the boxes with wooden benches, along with mosquito repellent and water, since refreshment points are few.

Is it true the Globe Theatre of Rome was built in record time

Yes, the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre was built in just three months, an oak ring 33 meters in outer diameter with three tiers of boxes, walkways, a covered stage and a copper roof. The wood also allows a technically reversible structure, an argument that made it easier to authorize inside a protected historic park.

The advice I give you for visiting the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

Take the standing stalls, at least once. It costs less than everything else and is the only section that gives back the experience this building was built for. You arrive an hour early, take the edge of the proscenium on the left side looking at the stage, and from there you don't move: when the actor comes on, he's right on top of you. Anyone who can't stand two hours should fall back on the first tier of side boxes, which is the best compromise between price and view, and forget the central seats, which cost more and put you exactly in the condition of any ordinary hall.

Second tip, on timing: arrive at the park with an hour and a half of margin and take a walk first. Villa Borghese at sunset is a different thing from Villa Borghese at three in the afternoon, and the route from Piazza di Siena to the theater, with the pines lighting up orange, prepares you for the evening better than any house program. Third tip, on weather: check the forecast, but don't cancel over a chance of rain. Roman summer downpours last 20 minutes and shows, except in serious cases, go on. King Lear in real rain is something that happens once in a lifetime.

Last, for those accompanying groups or organizing a corporate evening: the theater isn't equipped for catering and the park closes the vehicle gates at hours that change with the season. Anyone preparing a structured evening for a group, with transfer, dinner and show, would do well to get help from someone who knows the regulations in force: the colleagues of TourLeaderPro in Rome routinely organize this kind of logistics.

Another well-known fact, yet not often cited

That the London Globe burned because of a special effect. On June 29, 1613, during a performance of Henry VIII, a blank cannon shot fired to announce the king's entrance sent sparks onto the straw roof. In less than an hour the theater was gone. It's a fact found in any textbook, and yet almost nobody connects it to the choice made in Rome in 2003: the roof of the Villa Borghese Globe is in copper shingles. In London, in the 1997 reconstruction, they obtained an extraordinary authorization to redo the straw, the first granted in the city after the great fire of 1666, and secured it with modern systems. In Rome they preferred metal.

The second well-known and little-cited fact concerns capacity. The original Globe of 1599 held about 3,000 spectators. The London reconstruction, because of fire regulations, stops around 1,400. The Roman one at 1,206. Elizabethan theater was, in contemporary terms, a big-event venue, with an enormous, noisy audience that ate and commented out loud. The idea of religious silence in the hall is a 19th-century invention. When at the Villa Borghese Globe the stalls react noisily to a line, they are not violating a code: they are respecting it.

Third fact, the most neglected of all: the Roman Globe's season has been annual and uninterrupted since 2003, except for the interruptions imposed by the health emergency. Two decades of Shakespeare in a public park, with popular tickets, in a city that has always had little resident theater relative to its size. It's a result that would deserve more critical attention than it gets.

The right photo to take at the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

The photograph everyone tries is the wooden ring seen from the third tier of boxes, with the stalls below and the sky above. It's a good photograph and I advise against it as a first choice, because you find it identical in 10,000 copies. The right photograph is another: the exterior of the building shot from the tree-lined avenue at sunset, with the wood absorbing the warm light and the stone pines closing the frame at the top. The oxidized copper of the roof harmonizes with the green of the pine needles and the result is a photograph that doesn't look Roman and doesn't look English, which is precisely what the building is.

If you want the interior instead, the position to look for is the edge of the standing stalls, on the proscenium side, with the wide angle pointed upward: you capture the full curve of the three tiers of boxes and the geometry of the ring becomes readable. Do it before the show begins, with the house lights on. Once the performance has started photos aren't taken, and it's a rule applied seriously here, because with the stalls lit a lit-up screen bothers everyone.

Now the technical part: the half hour before the start, in summer, is the right one. The sun is low, the wood lights up, and the artificial stage lighting hasn't yet taken over. If you're after the detail rather than the whole, aim at the tuff floor of the stalls: the dry-laid blocks, with their porous grain and irregular joints, are the most interesting macro subject in the whole building, and nobody ever photographs them.

Some important events that happened here in history

The first event is the construction itself, in 2003, in three months of work inside a protected historic park. A new building inside Villa Borghese is not something that happens often, and the fact that the structure is wooden, therefore technically reversible, was one of the arguments that made its authorization possible.

The second is the inauguration, with Romeo and Juliet directed by Gigi Proietti, in the year of the centenary of Villa Borghese as a public park. The opening marked the beginning of an annual season that has not been interrupted since except for reasons of force majeure.

The third is the inauguration of the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre Archive in 2020, the result of the agreement between Politeama Srl and the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures of Roma Tre University. A theater that archives itself in digital form, show by show, from 2003 onward, is a textbook case in Italy.

The fourth is the death of Gigi Proietti, on November 2, 2020, on his 80th birthday. The next day, November 3, the mayor Virginia Raggi and the Silvano Toti Foundation announced the naming of the theater for him too. The 2021 season, presented at a press conference on June 7 of that year, was the first with the new name, and the first without its director. Anyone who was in the stalls that summer remembers an audience that applauded before the show had even begun.

The fifth is the passing of the artistic direction to Nicola Piovani from summer 2022, which opened a new phase, with greater attention to the musical component of the productions.

Who has passed through the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

The name that weighs on everyone is Gigi Proietti, who imagined this theater, directed it for 17 seasons and left his method here. Around him passed a substantial part of recent Italian theater: the young companies trained in the Brancaccio workshop, the actors who had their first big chance here in front of a large audience, the directors who measured themselves against a stage space that doesn't forgive laziness.

Since 2022 the theater has been led by Nicola Piovani, composer, Oscar winner in 1999 for Life Is Beautiful, a figure who has crossed Italian cinema from the 1970s onward working with the major directors of his generation. His presence has brought into the program musicians and actors coming from fields other than pure drama.

On the institutional side, the theater passed through the hands of the Toti family, with the Foundation named for Silvano Toti that financed its construction, and through those of the Capitoline administration, from the city government that in 2003 authorized and built the structure to the one that in November 2020 wanted the naming for Proietti.

Finally there is a presence that runs through the building without ever having been there: William Shakespeare. The Southwark Globe where his texts were staged from 1599 has not existed since the middle of the 17th century, and the oak ring of Villa Borghese is one of the very few places in the world where those texts are once again spoken in the conditions for which they were written. With a Roman accent, and I don't mind that at all.

Quick questions about the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

Where exactly is the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

Inside Villa Borghese, with its main entrance at Largo Aqua Felix, toward Piazza di Siena. The stage entrance is on Via Valle Giulia and the box office on Viale Pietro Canonica.

How do you get to the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome by public transport

By metro line A, stops Flaminio or Spagna, and then on foot through the park. Alternatively by trams 19 and 3, which run along Viale delle Belle Arti, from where you walk up toward Valle Giulia.

How much is the ticket

The price changes by section, by day and by production. The valid price list is the one the theater publishes at the start of the season and that the box office applies: it's best to check it on the official channels before leaving.

Can you buy tickets online

Yes. The theater authorizes an online reseller, indicated from time to time on its official channels. On high-demand evenings advance sales avoid the line at the entrance.

How many seats does the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome have

1,206 seats in total, of which 415 standing in the open stalls and the others distributed over the three tiers of boxes.

Do you watch standing or seated

It depends on the section. The stalls are standing, as in the Elizabethan tradition. The boxes on the three levels are seated, on wooden structures.

How long does a show last

Generally between two hours and two and a half hours, with an intermission. Evening starts are around 21:00 in the central months of summer.

What happens if it rains

With light rain the performance goes on and those in the stalls get wet, because the stalls are open-air. Any suspension and the refund conditions are decided by the management according to what is stated on the ticket.

Is it wheelchair accessible

Easier access by car goes through Largo Pablo Picasso. Reserved places are in the stalls, in limited numbers, and must be flagged at the time of purchase. The boxes can be reached only by stairs and walkways.

Can you take photos at the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

Not during the show. Before and after, with the house lights on, photographing the building is normally tolerated.

Is it suitable for kids

From age 10 up it's a good experience, especially with the comedies. Below that age the limit is not the text but the time, because it ends after 23:00.

Is the theater open all year

No. The season is concentrated in the warm months, roughly from late June to the first half of October, because the stalls are open-air and winter operation is not possible.

Why is it called Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre Silvano Toti

Silvano Toti is the businessman and patron in whose memory the family named the Foundation that financed the construction in 2003. The name of Gigi Proietti was added after his death, on November 2, 2020, and has been operative since the 2021 season.

Who directs the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome today

The artistic direction has been entrusted to Nicola Piovani since summer 2022. The exclusive artistic management belongs to Politeama Srl.

Is it an exact copy of the London Globe

No, and it's good to know. There are no designs of the original building of 1599: both the London reconstruction of 1997 and the Roman one of 2003 are reconstructive hypotheses, and they differ from each other on a number of elements.

What is the difference from the London Globe

The London Globe, reopened in 1997 a short distance from the original site, has a straw roof and a capacity of about 1,400 seats. The Roman one has a copper-shingle roof, 1,206 seats and an outer diameter of 33 meters. Both have standing stalls.

What materials is it built with

Entirely in oak wood from managed and reforested forests, with the stalls paved in dry-laid tuff blocks and the roofing in copper shingles.

Where to park near the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

At Largo Pablo Picasso, about 100 meters from the theater. On show nights it fills up fast, so it's best to arrive early or use the metro.

Is it performed in English or Italian

In Italian. The Elizabethan repertoire is presented in translation, often with modern adaptations, and this is one of the reasons for the theater's success with young audiences.

What shows have been staged

Among the historic productions: Romeo and Juliet, Love's Labour's Lost, Othello, Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest.

Is there an archive of the shows

Yes, the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre Archive, inaugurated in 2020 with Roma Tre University. The catalog is online and the materials are consulted at the Multimedia Center at Via del Valco di San Paolo 19.

How early is it best to arrive

At least 45 minutes, an hour if you have the standing stalls ticket and want the front row at the proscenium. The walk from the metro has to be added separately.

What can you visit in the park before the show

Within a 10-minute walk: the Galleria Borghese, the Bioparco, the Carlo Bilotti Museum in the former Orangery, the Casa del Cinema in the Casina delle Rose, the Secret Gardens and the terrace of the Pincio.

Do groups need to book

Yes, and well in advance, because contiguous sections sell out first. For an evening organized with transfer and dinner it's best to rely on professionals: TourLeaderPro routinely handles this kind of request.

Is there a refreshment service

Refreshment points in the immediate vicinity are few and lines form at intermission. It's best to bring a bottle of water and eat dinner beforehand, in one of the places outside the park toward Porta Pinciana or Viale delle Belle Arti.

Is it good advice for people visiting Rome for the first time

If your stay is three full days and you understand Italian, yes, as a closing evening. Those who travel in English will find the dedicated guides on ItalyPlanner, which reasons about the priorities of a first trip better than any list.

The final opinion on the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre in Rome

There are quite a few open-air theaters, many more beautiful than this one on paper. None works as well. The reason is that the Villa Borghese Globe is not a neutral container into which a show is put: it's a machine that imposes a way of acting and a way of watching, and whoever enters for the first time notices it after 10 minutes. Take the standing places, bring a sweatshirt, go at the end of June or in mid-September. If a thunderstorm catches you, stay.

One last thing, about the name. The theater has borne Gigi Proietti's name since 2021, and the addition is not rhetoric: without his idea of 2003 and without 17 seasons of direction, that oak ring would not exist. Anyone organizing a trip to Rome around the theater finds on ItalyPlanner a three-day itinerary that leaves the evening free, and it's the right way to fit it in.

Article written by the editorial team of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences.

Planning a trip to Rome? The English-language guides to visiting the city are on ItalyPlanner.com.