Teatro Brancaccio

Teatro Brancaccio is at Via Merulana 244, 00185 Rome, on the flank of the Oppian Hill, halfway between Santa Maria Maggiore and the Colosseum. You get there by metro line A, Vittorio Emanuele stop, or by line B and the B1 branch, Cavour stop: from both it's a few minutes' walk. The surface lines serving Via Merulana are 16, 75, 714, 717 and C3, with stops at Merulana/Brancaccio and Merulana/Mecenate. On Via Labicana, at the corner with Merulana, 3, 53, 85, 87, 186, 571 and 810 also stop, along with the night line N10. The nearest taxi stands are at Largo Brancaccio, at Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II 113 (phone 328 4714714), at Via Principe Amedeo 138 (phone 06 4460182), at Via Giolitti 6 and on Via Venosta (phone 6645). The box office is open Tuesday to Saturday from 16:00 to 19:00, on Sundays when there are performances, and is closed on Monday. You write to botteghino@teatrobrancaccio.it or use the WhatsApp number 344 1455127. Prices change from production to production, so the ticket cost has to be read on the page of the show you're interested in on the theater's official website: you won't find a single price list here, because there isn't one.

If you're putting together a Roman itinerary that includes an evening at the theater, the collection of tourist attractions in Rome helps you fit the afternoon around the evening show.

What Teatro Brancaccio Really Is

Teatro Brancaccio is the hall that Romans call, with a certain proprietary ease, the theater of Rome. It isn't an official title and doesn't correspond to any public role: it's a way of speaking born over half a century of revue, variety shows, concerts and popular drama, and the theater has kept it. Today's programming brings together large-scale musicals, contemporary dance, concerts, contemporary circus, stand up, drama and children's theater, with companies arriving from half the world. For capacity, for continuity of management and for number of performances on the schedule, the Brancaccio is among Italy's top halls, and after the work of recent decades it is also one of the best equipped technically, with declared attention to reducing consumption and to the accessibility of its spaces.

It's worth making one thing clear right away that confuses many visitors: Teatro Brancaccio is not a museum and cannot be visited during the day. There are no tours of the hall, no admission ticket for the building, no opening hours for the public beyond those of the box office. You go in to see a show, period. Whoever arrives at Via Merulana with the idea of taking a look at the foyer goes home with a photo of the facade and nothing more.

Where Teatro Brancaccio Is and How to Get There

Via Merulana is the straight axis that Sixtus V had opened at the end of the 16th century to connect Santa Maria Maggiore to San Giovanni in Laterano. Teatro Brancaccio occupies the upper stretch of this straight road, on the side of the Oppian Hill, at a point that in the 20th century became one of the densest transport crossings in the city. This explains why, even though the hall is large, the outflow at the end of a show clears quickly.

By Metro to Teatro Brancaccio

The most convenient stop is Vittorio Emanuele on line A: you exit onto Piazza Vittorio, take Via Carlo Alberto or Via Merulana and in five or six minutes you're in front of the entrance. From line B and B1 the stop is Cavour: the walk is slightly longer and slightly uphill along Via Giovanni Lanza, but it's the route I recommend to those arriving from the Colosseum, because it passes under San Pietro in Vincoli and offers a glimpse of the Monti district. From Termini, the hub where both lines converge, you get there on foot in a good quarter of an hour crossing the Esquilino.

Buses, Taxis and Cars for Teatro Brancaccio

Lines 16, 75, 714, 717 and C3 stop at Merulana/Brancaccio and at Merulana/Mecenate, practically on the theater's sidewalk. On Via Labicana, a few dozen meters lower down, 3, 53, 85, 87, 186, 571 and 810 pass, with the night line N10 covering late exits from evening performances. Some of these stops were set up temporarily for works on the surface network, so it's best to check the sign before counting on a connection. By taxi you reach the stands at Largo Brancaccio, Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II 113, Via Principe Amedeo 138, Via Giolitti 6 and Via Venosta. By car, honesty requires me to say it: Via Merulana has no parking, the blue-line spaces around Piazza Vittorio rarely free up, and the area is right up against the limited traffic zone of the historic center. If you're coming from outside Rome, leave the car in a park-and-ride lot and take the metro.

Metro

• Line A, stop Vittorio Emanuele
• Line B, stop Cavour
• Line B1, stop Cavour

Taxi

• Largo Brancaccio
• Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, 113, phone 328 4714714
• Via Principe Amedeo, 138, phone 06 4460182
• Via Giolitti, 6
• Via Venosta, phone 6645

Bus

• Merulana/Brancaccio stop, lines 16, 75, 714, 717, C3
• Merulana/Mecenate stop, lines 16, 75, 714, 717, C3
• Labicana/Merulana stop, lines 3, 53, 75, 85, 87, 186, 571, 810, C3 and night line N10

Car

• Address for the GPS: Via Merulana 244, 00185 Rome
• No parking belonging to the theater, scarce paid parking within 300 meters

The Box Office of Teatro Brancaccio: Hours, Contacts and Tickets

The box office is the only physical point of contact with the theater outside show hours. It opens Tuesday to Saturday from 16:00 to 19:00 and on Sundays on days when there is a performance. It is closed on Monday. The email address is botteghino@teatrobrancaccio.it and the WhatsApp number is 344 1455127. On the evening of a show the ticket window generally opens an hour before the start, but it's a practice that changes with the production: if you have a pickup to make, arrive with a margin and not in the last-minute rush.

On prices I won't tell you fairy tales: at the Brancaccio there is no standard ticket. A large-scale musical with a live orchestra, three months of staging and a cast of 40 people has a different price list from a stand up evening or a matinee for schools. The sections of the hall are divided between orchestra and balcony, and the price difference between the first row of the orchestra and the last row of the balcony can be substantial. Online purchase goes through the authorized seller that the theater indicates on its official website, and from there you see the seat map with updated availability. The practical advice is just one: for the most requested titles, buy as soon as the calendar comes out, because the central dates of a successful musical sell out weeks in advance.

Palazzo Brancaccio, the Palace from Which Teatro Brancaccio Was Born

To understand the theater you have to start from the palace that gave it its name and its ground. Palazzo Brancaccio is the last noble palace built in Rome, and that alone would be enough to make it a case study: when the building site opens, the season of the great Roman aristocratic palaces has been over for a long time, and the capital's construction has taken the road of the Umbertine bourgeois villini.

An American Dowry for a Neapolitan Prince

The operation was born from a marriage. Elizabeth Hickson Field, daughter of the American Mary Elizabeth Bradhurst Field, marries Prince Salvatore Brancaccio, from a Neapolitan family. The bride's mother buys from the Comune of Rome in 1879 the area of the former church of Santa Maria della Purificazione with the surrounding land, on the northern flank of the Oppian Hill, and finances the construction of the residence. It's a dynamic that 19th-century Europe knows well: American capital enters the titled families of the old continent and restarts their building sites. In the Roman case the result is a palace with a private garden of almost two hectares overlooking Via Merulana, which in central Rome, then as now, is an absolute rarity.

Koch, Carimini and a Building Site Lasting 40 Years

The direction of the works changes hands several times, and this explains the composite look of the building. The first phase, between 1879 and 1883, is by Gaetano Koch, the architect who in Rome signed the Banca d'Italia buildings on Via Nazionale and the porticoes of Piazza della Repubblica. From 1886 to 1890 Luca Carimini takes over, a Roman, born in 1830 and died in 1890, a figure who deserves two more lines: orphaned at 14, trained as a stonecutter and decorator, he opens a workshop thanks to an uncle, and only at 38, in 1868, does he graduate in architecture at Sapienza after studying at the Accademia di San Luca. He is the craftsman who becomes a designer, the human type that papal Rome produced in series and that capital Rome would stop producing. His are the reconstruction of Sant'Ivo dei Bretoni and the convent of Sant'Antonio. To Carimini is owed the enlargement of the palace along Via Merulana. After his death the building site continues with Rodolfo Buti and with Sacconi, and closes only in the 1920s.

The Museum That Is No More and Today's Exhibition Space

From 1958 to 2017 part of the palace housed the Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale Giuseppe Tucci, which was then moved and merged into the EUR museum hub. Whoever arrives at Via Merulana today looking for the Asian collections no longer finds them in this building: it's one of the pieces of information that still circulate wrongly in old guidebooks. Today the palace is subdivided, one part is used for events and receptions and one part houses an exhibition space of about 1,800 square meters carved out of the frescoed rooms of the piano nobile.

1916: Teatro Morgana Is Born, Future Teatro Brancaccio

The theater was inaugurated on January 16, 1916 under the name Teatro Morgana. It isn't an isolated building: it's built against the embankment of the gardens of Palazzo Field-Brancaccio, taking advantage of the difference in level of the Oppian Hill. Whoever looks at the facade from Via Merulana doesn't notice, but the hall is literally set into the hill, and that relationship with the ground has conditioned all the later renovations.

The attribution of the design should be handled with caution, because the sources don't agree. A recurring tradition traces it to a design by Luca Carimini brought to completion after his death by the engineer Sacconi, the same one who closed the works on the palace. Other reconstructions attribute the 1916 building directly to Giuseppe Sacconi, the author of the Vittoriano. What is documented with certainty is the building-site link between palace and theater: same client, same area, same workforce, and the hall born as a show annex of a private residence.

The name Morgana lasts a short time. Over the years the hall changes its sign and takes that of Politeama Brancaccio, then Teatro Brancaccio, referring to the family that owned the land. Politeama, in the Italian theatrical vocabulary of the early 20th century, indicates exactly this: a venue able to host different genres, from operetta to revue, from concert to film screening. The Brancaccio was born with that amphibious vocation and never lost it.

1937, the Real Capacity of Teatro Brancaccio and the Cinema Years

The date that counts as much as 1916 is 1937. In that year the theater reopens in a completely new configuration, the one you still recognize as you enter: two foyers, a wide orchestra and two raised levels, first and second balcony. The capacity at the time was about 2,000 seats, a number for a large popular hall that no safety regulation today would allow to replicate.

Here one thing needs to be said clearly that sources online constantly confuse. The current capacity is not that of 1937. The theater today describes its historic hall as a hall of over 1,600 seats divided into orchestra and balcony, with access to the orchestra pit and a wide and equipped stage. Figures around 1,750 seats also circulate, referring to technical surveys. The range depends on how you count the seats actually sellable in a given configuration: a production with an orchestra in the pit, with audio towers in the stalls or with a set that occupies the proscenium subtracts dozens of seats. The prudent figure, the one you really need, is that the Brancaccio is a hall of over 1,600 seats: among the largest in Rome and one of the few in the city able to host an international-format musical without cuts to the staging.

From 1937 the space is also used as a cinema, and for decades the double nature coexists: film on weekday afternoons, stage in the evening and on weekends. It's the economic model that kept half of theatrical Rome alive in the postwar period, when cinema paid the bills and theater held the prestige.

The Return to Theater: 1978 and the Opera Season

The reopening that brings the Brancaccio back to the center of the Roman scene is that of 1978, after a restoration that returns the hall to a properly theatrical use. Tied to the restart are the names of Gabriele Lavia and Gigi Proietti, two presences that mark the character of the hall: actors' theater, elevated verse but understandable language, direct relationship with an audience that is not that of the experimental circuits.

From 1985 to 2000 the Brancaccio hosts the activities of the Fondazione dell'Opera di Roma, which brings opera and ballet there while the theater on Piazza Beniamino Gigli undergoes its own works. Seeing the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma on tour on Via Merulana for 15 years left a precise technical mark: the orchestra pit and the stage equipment that the hall has today come from that long coexistence with opera production.

The Artistic Directions of Teatro Brancaccio

The chronology of managements tells well how Italian theater has changed in 30 years. After the Opera season, in 2001 comes the direction of Gigi Proietti, who stays until 2007 and gives the hall his own idea of cultured popular theater, with particular attention to the training of actors. From 2007 to 2010 the direction is Maurizio Costanzo's, who brings to the Brancaccio his own television language and a more hybrid programming. From 2010 to 2012 management passes to Stage Entertainment Italia, the international musical company, and in that two-year period the hall is definitively calibrated to the needs of the large musical with a live orchestra.

Since September 2012 the artistic direction has been Alessandro Longobardi's, with the management of Viola Produzioni. It's the longest and most coherent phase of the theater's recent history: the Brancaccio becomes the pivot of a group that includes other Roman halls and that produces its own shows instead of merely hosting them. If today the Brancaccio is not just a container for rent, it's thanks to this choice.

The Hall, the Stage and the Foyers of Teatro Brancaccio

The plan is the classic one of the great politeama: deep orchestra, two overlapping balconies, wide proscenium and a usable orchestra pit. The two foyers are large and served by two bars, and are also used outside the season for conferences, receptions and exhibitions. Those who know Roman halls notice a particularity right away: at the Brancaccio the balcony is not a narrow gallery hung up high, it's a real tiered seating, with a slope that keeps the view clear even in the back rows.

Where to Sit in the Orchestra at Teatro Brancaccio

A clear opinion: the first three rows of the orchestra are the worst seats in the theater. You pay more to sit below the level of the stage, with your neck bent upward and with the orchestra pit that, when open, physically separates you from the scene. The best spot for a musical is the center of the orchestra between the seventh and the fifteenth row, where the audio mix is calibrated and the scene can be read in full. For drama, where the actor's face matters, you can go up to the first rows of the first balcony without losing anything and spending less.

The Second Balcony and Reduced-Price Seats

The second balcony is the economy section, and like all the economy sections of large halls it has a flaw and a merit. The flaw is distance: for a spoken-word show, without strong amplification, you lose something from up there. The merit is the overall view, which for a dance choreography or a musical with choral numbers is even preferable to the orchestra. If you're going to see a ballet, the central second balcony is the best value for price that Teatro Brancaccio offers.

The Brancaccino, the Second Hall of Teatro Brancaccio

The Teatro Brancaccio hub doesn't end with the big hall. On the second level of the building is the Brancaccino, a multipurpose space with telescopic seating for 104, used for contemporary drama, music, dance, workshops and rehearsals. The dimensions completely change the nature of the experience: in a hall of 100 seats the relationship with the actor is close, there is no amplification, no shielding, and the shows you see there often belong to young companies or to dramaturgies that in a hall of 1,600 seats would have no room to breathe.

The advice, for those who live in Rome and are not passing through: keep an eye on the Brancaccino schedule as well as that of the big hall. It costs little, is easy to book and it often happens that you see there, two or three years earlier, the actors you'll then find in the casts of the musicals downstairs.

The Cultural Hub and the Academies of Teatro Brancaccio

Around the two halls revolves a training system that few Italian theaters have structured on this scale. The complex also includes an urban park of about two hectares, what used to be the garden of the palace, and a large terrace overlooking Via Merulana.

STAP Brancaccio, the Acting Academy

STAP Brancaccio is the theater's academy of acting, directing and dramaturgy, directed by Lorenzo Gioielli. It trains actors with a multi-year course that combines basic technique, work on text and stage practice inside a working theater, which is the substantial difference from a school hosted in some ordinary classroom.

BMA, the Brancaccio Musical Academy

BMA, the Brancaccio Musical Academy, is the academy of drama and musical theatre directed by Gianluca Guidi. Italian musical theater suffered for years from a lack of performers able to handle singing, acting and dance together: structures like this are born exactly to fill that gap, and the fact that they are inside the theater that then produces the shows closes the circle.

Brancaccio Danza

Brancaccio Danza is the dance training and research center directed by Alessandro Rende and Alessia Gatta, with declared attention to contemporary language. Here too the logic is that of the single place: you study where you produce and where you go on stage.

Officine del Teatro Italiano and Spazio Impero

In 2014 Officine del Teatro Italiano was born, the theatrical production center of Teatro Brancaccio dedicated to musicals and drama, which works on the nine rehearsal rooms of Spazio Impero. The productions then circulate in the group's other spaces, including Sala Umberto and Spazio Diamante. To be clear: when you see a title on stage at the Brancaccio, there is a concrete probability that it was rehearsed, built and put together a few hundred meters from there, and not bought turnkey from a foreign company.

Workshops, Courses and Children's Theater at Teatro Brancaccio

The theater organizes theater workshops, seminars and courses in theater and dance for children, teens and adults, with a program dedicated to families and children that steadily occupies the weekends of the season. The matinees for schools fill the weekday mornings in many periods of the year: if you happen to pass along Via Merulana at 09:30 on a Tuesday in November and find 200 kids lined up on the sidewalk, you know what is going on.

The Typical Season at Teatro Brancaccio

The Brancaccio's season runs from October to May, with a tail in June, and has a recognizable structure that repeats from year to year. The backbone is made of two or three large musicals that hold the schedule for long periods, from two or three weeks up to a full month. Around these blocks fit the concerts, which at the Brancaccio mean mostly singer-songwriter and auteur music in a theater format, drama with big-draw names, contemporary dance, contemporary circus and stand up comedy, which in recent years has won a growing number of dates.

The musical, at the Brancaccio, is not a genre among others: it's the house specialty. The productions announced for recent seasons include international titles brought over in Italian and original productions with directing and librettos written specially. The concerts on the schedule are generally single evenings or short residencies, as you can see from the pages dedicated to concerts at Teatro Brancaccio and from the evenings of Italian singer-songwriters that the hall hosts regularly.

The updated calendar and the prices of individual titles must be read on the theater's official website, because they change from production to production and are published in stages over the course of the year.

Accessibility at Teatro Brancaccio

The theater has four seats in the orchestra reserved for people with motor disabilities who use a wheelchair, with their companions, and an accessible restroom on the ground floor. The balconies cannot be reached by wheelchair and there are no elevators to the upper levels: it's a structural limit of a 1916 building set into a hill, and it has to be taken into account.

Reserved seats in the orchestra are also provided for people with visual or hearing disabilities, always on request and within the limits of availability. Those with a certified guide dog can request the ticket by writing to the box office and attaching the documentation. People with a disability certification or with a Disability Card get reduced rates, which are however set by each production and therefore vary from show to show. The procedure is always the same: request form sent to botteghino@teatrobrancaccio.it with a copy of the certification, and confirmation from the box office on availability and price. A ticket bought through other channels does not guarantee the accessible seat: this is the point on which people most often go wrong, and it means arriving on the evening of the show and discovering that the assigned seat is in the balcony.

A Curiosity About Teatro Brancaccio

The curiosity I like best concerns the name the theater had at birth and that almost nobody remembers: Teatro Morgana. When it opens, on January 16, 1916, Italy has been at war for eight months, Rome is a city of fewer than 600,000 inhabitants and the Esquilino is a very recently built neighborhood, thrown up in a hurry after 1870 to house the bureaucracy of the new State. Inaugurating a performance hall at that moment and in that spot is a reckless commercial gamble. The name Morgana, with that reference to the fairy of the Arthurian cycle and to the mirage of the fata morgana, belonged to the Liberty taste of the era and promised enchantment to an audience that was leaving the new houses of the district to look for entertainment a step from home.

The second part of the curiosity is more concrete. The theater was not built on flat ground: it was set against the embankment of the gardens of Palazzo Field-Brancaccio, using the flank of the Oppian Hill as a de facto load-bearing wall. Whoever enters the hall today perceives none of this, because the interior volume is perfectly regular. But that hill behind the stage is the reason why Teatro Brancaccio, over a century, could be widened toward the street and upward but never toward the back. Every renovation had to come to terms with the Oppian, and the hall you see is the form that constraint allowed.

A detail that completes the picture: in the complex there still survives an urban park of about two hectares, what used to be the private garden of the palace. Two hectares of private green 300 meters from Piazza Vittorio, in a city that built over everything buildable between 1880 and 1930, are a historical anomaly worth knowing about.

Something Nobody Tells You About Teatro Brancaccio

Nobody tells you that for 15 years, from 1985 to 2000, Teatro Brancaccio was in effect the temporary home of the Opera di Roma. The Foundation brought opera and ballet there, and this left in the hall a technical legacy that today's spectators use without knowing it: the orchestra pit, the stage equipment, the acoustic sizing designed for unamplified voices. When you see a musical today with a live orchestra in the pit, you're using a setup born for Verdi and Puccini.

The second thing that is rarely read concerns capacity. The figures that circulate online about Teatro Brancaccio range from 1,600 to 2,000 seats, and this generates wrong expectations. The explanation is that 2,000 was the capacity of the 1937 configuration, counted with criteria that no longer exist. The historic hall is described today as a hall of over 1,600 seats, and the number actually on sale changes with every staging because sets, audio towers and an open pit subtract seats. If you read two different numbers on two different sites, it's not that one is lying: they're counting two different things at two different moments.

Third piece of little-known information, and the most useful in practice: the Brancaccio has no parking of its own and no cloakroom of generous size. On a January evening, with 1,600 coats, the line at the coat check after the show is longer than the line to get in. Whoever is in a hurry to catch the last metro would do well to keep their overcoat on their lap.

My Advice for Visiting Teatro Brancaccio

The first piece of advice is about method: you don't go to Teatro Brancaccio at random. The hall is large and the bulk of the schedule is made of long productions, so it's best to choose the date with care instead of taking the last one available. For a musical, avoid the opening night and the very first week: large-scale shows have a real technical break-in period, and the timing settles after five or six performances. The second and third weeks of the run are the moment when the show runs best and the good seats are still available.

The second piece of advice concerns arrival time. Show up at Via Merulana 40 minutes before the start, not 10. The reason isn't the line at the ticket window, which is usually quick: it's that with a hall of over 1,600 seats the inflow is all concentrated in the last 15 minutes, and whoever arrives at the tail end enters the hall with the lights already down and disturbs a whole row to reach their seat. 40 minutes also lets you use the foyer, which is large, served by two bars and decidedly more pleasant than the sidewalk.

Third piece of advice: build the evening inside a day, not on its own. The Brancaccio is a 10-minute walk from Santa Maria Maggiore, a quarter of an hour from the Colosseum and 20 minutes from the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano. An afternoon at the Esquilino, an early dinner in the Monti area or on Via Merulana and then the show: it's the way the evening pays off most, and it saves you two useless crossings of the city.

Fourth and last: if you're coming with someone who has mobility difficulties, write to the box office days in advance and don't rely on online purchase. The four accessible seats in the orchestra are assigned on request, and a ticket bought through other channels doesn't guarantee them.

Another Well-Known Fact, Yet Rarely Cited

That Teatro Brancaccio was also a cinema many people know. That this double life lasted decades and shaped the theater we see today is almost never said. From 1937 the space also works as a movie theater, and the economic model of the time is very clear: film guarantees the daily takings, the stage guarantees prestige and the big events. Rome has lost dozens of halls that had exactly this double nature. The Brancaccio is among the few to have crossed the century without closing and without being converted into something else.

The consequence of that long cinema phase can still be seen in the hall. The slope of the orchestra, the depth of the volume, the width of the proscenium are measurements that answer two needs at once: viewing a screen and viewing a stage. It's also the reason why shows with projections and video sets work well at the Brancaccio, while in other historic Roman halls they come across as forced.

There is also an aspect that concerns the audience. A hall that for decades sold cinema tickets at popular prices builds a different relationship with the neighborhood than a theater born for an elite audience. In the Esquilino the Brancaccio has always been the place where you went, not the place where you were invited. That neighborhood habit has survived changes of management and is one of the reasons the theater fills even its less-advertised titles.

The Right Photo to Take at Teatro Brancaccio

The photograph that works is the facade on Via Merulana shot from the opposite sidewalk, in the evening, with the signs lit and the line of spectators going in. One trick is needed: stand at the height of number 233 on the odd side, a little lower down toward Via Labicana, and frame at a slight diagonal. From there the facade doesn't look flattened and at the top the outline of the embankment of the Oppian Hill enters the frame with the trees of the park, which is exactly the visual story of the theater: a performance building leaning on an archaeological hill.

The right time is civil twilight, when the sky still has a blue background and the lights are already on. With a black sky you lose the outline of the trees and get a flat facade with a few spots of light. In winter that means around 17:30, in spring around 20:00. It almost always coincides with the opening of the doors for the evening show, and the line in front of the entrance gives scale and life to the shot.

Inside the theater, instead, use judgment: during the show, taking photos and filming is forbidden, and not out of whim but for the rights of the producers and out of respect for those who paid for a ticket. The foyer before the start and during the interval is instead the place where you take home the best images of the interiors. If you're looking for a second strong shot outside, walk 100 meters up Via Merulana: from the point where the street crests you see the flank of the complex with the green of the park above, and in a single image you have the palace, the theater and the garden that holds them together.

Some Important Events That Happened Here in History

The first event is the inauguration itself, on January 16, 1916, under the name Teatro Morgana. Opening a hall in the midst of the Great War, in a district built barely 30 years earlier, was not a given, and the fact that that hall still exists today with the same purpose makes it one of the few Roman performance venues with over a century of almost uninterrupted activity.

The second is the reopening of 1937 in the current configuration, with two foyers, the orchestra and the two balconies for about 2,000 seats at the time, and with the change to the Brancaccio name. It's the year the theater takes on the look we still recognize and in which the double use, theatrical and cinematic, begins.

The third event is the most famous, and belongs to the history of music even before that of theater. On May 24 and 25, 1968 The Jimi Hendrix Experience plays at Teatro Brancaccio: four sessions in two days, between afternoon and evening, within the band's European tour. The set list of the May 25 repeat is documented and included I Don't Live Today, Hey Joe, Stone Free, Manic Depression, Foxy Lady, Red House and Wild Thing. The next day the group was playing in Bologna. These are the dates that put the Brancaccio into the mythology of Italian rock, and still today there are people who enter that hall thinking about it.

The fourth is the reopening of 1978 after the restoration, with Gabriele Lavia and Gigi Proietti marking the restart. The fifth is the long residency of the Fondazione dell'Opera di Roma from 1985 to 2000, which for 15 years makes the Brancaccio an opera house in every respect. The sixth is the birth, in 2014, of Officine del Teatro Italiano, which turns the theater from a place that hosts into a place that produces, with nine rehearsal rooms at Spazio Impero and an in-house chain that includes the academies of acting, musical and dance.

Who Has Passed Through Teatro Brancaccio

The list of artists who have stepped onto that stage is the reason Romans call the Brancaccio the theater of Rome. From the side of comic and popular Italian theater, those who have passed through include Ettore Petrolini, the greatest inventor of masks of the 20th-century Roman scene, Totò, Anna Magnani, Aldo Fabrizi and Gigi Proietti, who at the Brancaccio was not just a guest but artistic director from 2001 to 2007.

On the musical side the list is just as heavy. Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix with the four sessions of May 24 and 25, 1968, Fabrizio De André and Adriano Celentano are the names that the history of the hall claims with the greatest pride. In Hendrix's case the documentation is precise, with set list and verifiable dates. For the others it is a consolidated tradition of the house, reported by the theater itself.

Then there is the chapter of the direction. Gabriele Lavia at the 1978 reopening, Gigi Proietti in the 2000s, Maurizio Costanzo from 2007 to 2010, the international musical company between 2010 and 2012 and Alessandro Longobardi from September 2012: five different ways of understanding what a great Roman hall should be, all passed through the same door on Via Merulana.

Finally there are the less visible but no less important presences: the singers and dancers trained at the house academies, who from the Brancaccino or from the rehearsal rooms of Spazio Impero have reached the casts of the big hall's musicals. In a theater that produces, those who have passed through are not only those who trod the boards for one evening.

The Esquilino Around Teatro Brancaccio

The neighborhood deserves more than a passing sentence, because it's one of the most misunderstood areas of Rome. The Esquilino was born as an expansion district after 1870, designed on a Piedmontese grid around Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, the largest porticoed square in the city. For a century it was the neighborhood of state employees, then the neighborhood of the market, and since the 1990s it has become the most multiethnic area of Rome. Those who pass through only in a rush between the station and the Colosseum miss one of the most interesting urban layerings of the capital.

Piazza Vittorio and the Market, a Step From Teatro Brancaccio

The garden of Piazza Vittorio preserves the remains of the Trophies of Marius, the monumental display of a Severan aqueduct, and the Porta Alchemica, the only magic door with alchemical inscriptions left in Rome, coming from the villa of the Marquis Palombara. The Nuovo Mercato Esquilino, moved from the square into the sheds of Via Principe Amedeo, is the place where in Rome you buy the spices, fish and vegetables you don't find in other markets. In summer the garden of the square hosts an open-air cinema arena, and the cinema nights at Piazza Vittorio are by now a fixed appointment in the Roman summer calendar.

The Churches and Museums Within 10 Minutes of Teatro Brancaccio

Walking up Via Merulana you reach in a few minutes Santa Maria Maggiore, with the early Christian mosaics of the nave. In the opposite direction, going down toward Via Labicana, there are San Pietro in Vincoli with Michelangelo's Moses and, on the Oppian Hill, Nero's Domus Aurea. A few blocks away is the Basilica of Santa Prassede, with the Chapel of San Zeno, the most important entirely mosaic-covered space of the Roman early Middle Ages. On Via Merulana, at number 121, Palazzo Merulana houses a collection of 20th-century Italian art and is the right choice to fill the afternoon before an evening show. Not far away, below street level in Largo Leopardi, is the Auditorium of Maecenas, a nymphaeum of the Augustan age that tells the oldest phase of the neighborhood.

Where to Eat Before the Show at Teatro Brancaccio

I won't give you restaurant names, because they change management faster than a page gets updated. A criterion is worth more: eat early, by 19:30, and eat light. The trattorias of the Monti district, five minutes away going up toward Via Giovanni Lanza, and the kitchens of the Esquilino around Via Principe Amedeo cover a wide price range and different cuisines, from classic Roman to Asian. Avoid the places with the tourist menu displayed in four languages in front of the door right next to Piazza Vittorio: you'll pay more to eat worse, and with the show at 21:00 you don't have time to make up for it.

Teatro Brancaccio With Kids

Family programming is one of the stable legs of the schedule, not a consolation prize. Children's theater occupies the weekends, the matinees for schools fill the weekday mornings and the theater workshops for children and teens run all year round. The big hall, with its generous slope, also suits short spectators, which is a very concrete problem in Italian-style theaters with a flat orchestra.

Two professional warnings. The first: for a child under six, a two-and-a-half-hour musical with an interval is long, and the orchestra seats are deep. Better to choose the titles expressly dedicated to that age group than to take them to a big evening title. The second: the balcony, with small children, is uncomfortable for the simple fact that the steps are steep and in the dark it's hard going. With the little ones, orchestra.

When to Go to Teatro Brancaccio and When to Avoid It

The busy months are from November to March, when the big titles overlap. December is the most crowded month of the year: the Christmas performances of a big-draw musical sell out well in advance and the prices of the best sections go up. If you want the hall in its most comfortable form, aim for a Tuesday or Wednesday in January or February: same show, fewer people in the foyer, good seats still free and a drink at the interval without standing in line.

To avoid, if you can: the very first performance of a new production, for the technical reasons already mentioned, and the Saturday night of the last two weeks of a hit title, when the hall is full to the limit and getting out takes time. In summer the Brancaccio drastically reduces its activity, because the Roman season moves outdoors: if you're in Rome in July or August it's better to look toward the arenas and summer festivals than to hope for an evening on Via Merulana.

Teatro Brancaccio and the Other Large Roman Halls

It's worth understanding where the Brancaccio sits in the city's landscape, because the choice of hall changes the kind of evening. The Teatro Sistina, near Via Veneto, is the other great Roman hub for musicals and musical comedy, with a history that starts with Garinei and Giovannini. The Teatro Ambra Jovinelli, a step from Termini station, is the historic home of variety shows and today of auteur comedy. The Teatro Olimpico, in the Parioli district, is the hall of great international dance. The Brancaccio, with its over 1,600 seats, is the hall that handles the largest formats and orchestras in the pit: that's why international musicals, when they come to Rome, almost always come here.

Quick Questions About Teatro Brancaccio

Where exactly is Teatro Brancaccio?

At Via Merulana 244, 00185 Rome, in the Esquilino district, on the flank of the Oppian Hill, between Santa Maria Maggiore and the Colosseum.

What is the nearest metro to Teatro Brancaccio?

Vittorio Emanuele on line A, five or six minutes on foot. Alternatively Cavour on line B and B1, with a slightly longer walk along Via Giovanni Lanza.

Which buses stop near Teatro Brancaccio?

Lines 16, 75, 714, 717 and C3 at the Merulana/Brancaccio and Merulana/Mecenate stops. At Labicana/Merulana, 3, 53, 75, 85, 87, 186, 571, 810 and the night line N10 stop. Some stops are temporary, so it's best to check the sign.

How many seats does Teatro Brancaccio have?

The theater describes its historic hall as a hall of over 1,600 seats between orchestra and balcony. The 1937 configuration provided about 2,000 at the time. The number actually on sale changes from staging to staging.

How much is a ticket for Teatro Brancaccio?

There is no single price: each production sets its own price list, divided by orchestra and balcony sections. The price of the individual show can be read on the dedicated page of the theater's official website.

Where do you buy tickets for Teatro Brancaccio?

At the box office at Via Merulana 244 during opening hours, or online through the authorized seller that the theater indicates on its official website.

What are the box office hours of Teatro Brancaccio?

Tuesday to Saturday from 16:00 to 19:00, Sundays when there are performances, closed Monday. Contacts: botteghino@teatrobrancaccio.it and WhatsApp 344 1455127.

Can Teatro Brancaccio be visited during the day?

No. It isn't a museum and there are no guided tours of the hall: you enter only to attend a show.

Is Teatro Brancaccio wheelchair accessible?

The orchestra is, with four reserved seats and the respective companions, and there is an accessible restroom on the ground floor. The balconies cannot be reached by wheelchair and there are no elevators to the upper floors.

How do you book an accessible seat at Teatro Brancaccio?

By sending the request form to botteghino@teatrobrancaccio.it with a copy of the disability certification or the Disability Card. The box office confirms availability and rate. A ticket bought through other channels does not guarantee the accessible seat.

Can you take photos at Teatro Brancaccio?

Not during the show: filming and photography are forbidden. In the foyer, before the start and at the interval, generally you can.

How long does a show at Teatro Brancaccio last?

It depends on the genre. A large-scale musical often runs over two hours with an interval, a concert runs around two hours, a drama or stand up show can stay within an hour and a half. The stated duration is indicated on the page of the individual title.

What time do shows start at Teatro Brancaccio?

Times vary by production and by day of the week, with evening performances, afternoon ones on weekends and matinees for schools on weekday mornings. The exact time is on the ticket and on the show's page.

Is there parking at Teatro Brancaccio?

The theater has no parking of its own and street parking around Via Merulana is scarce. It's best to arrive by metro or taxi.

What is the Brancaccino?

It is the second hall of the complex, a multipurpose space with telescopic seating for 104, dedicated to contemporary drama, music, dance, workshops and rehearsals.

Is Teatro Brancaccio suitable for children?

Yes, with programming dedicated to families on weekends, matinees for schools and theater workshops for children and teens. For the smallest ones it's best to choose titles designed for their age group and sit in the orchestra.

What kind of shows can you see at Teatro Brancaccio?

Musicals, contemporary dance, concerts, drama, contemporary circus, stand up comedy and children's theater. The large-scale musical is the house specialty.

When does the season of Teatro Brancaccio run?

From October to May, with a few events in June. The major titles occupy the schedule for entire weeks and are announced in stages over the course of the year.

Who directs Teatro Brancaccio today?

The artistic direction has been Alessandro Longobardi's since September 2012, with the management of Viola Produzioni.

Why is Teatro Brancaccio called that?

After the name of the family that owned the area, the Field-Brancaccio, on whose embankment the theater was built. At birth, in 1916, it was called Teatro Morgana.

What is the difference between Teatro Brancaccio and Palazzo Brancaccio?

The palace is the 19th-century noble residence, the last built in Rome, today home to exhibition and event spaces. The theater is the 1916 performance building set against the embankment of its gardens. They are two distinct things with separate entrances.

Was Teatro Brancaccio really a cinema?

Yes. From 1937 the space was also used as a movie theater, and the double function coexisted for decades before the restoration that in 1978 brought it back to a fully theatrical use.

What is there to see near Teatro Brancaccio?

Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Prassede, San Pietro in Vincoli with the Moses, the Domus Aurea on the Oppian Hill, Palazzo Merulana, the Auditorium of Maecenas, Piazza Vittorio with the Porta Alchemica and the Nuovo Mercato Esquilino. The Colosseum is a quarter of an hour on foot.

Frequently Asked Questions About Teatro Brancaccio

Where exactly is Teatro Brancaccio?

Teatro Brancaccio is at Via Merulana 244, in the Esquilino district of Rome, on the flank of the Oppian Hill, between Santa Maria Maggiore and the Colosseum. It occupies the upper stretch of Via Merulana, the straight axis that Sixtus V had opened at the end of the 16th century, at a point that in the 20th century became one of the densest transport crossings in the city.

What is the nearest metro to Teatro Brancaccio?

The nearest metro stop to Teatro Brancaccio is Vittorio Emanuele, on line A, five or six minutes on foot. Alternatively you can use the Cavour stop, on line B and B1, with a slightly longer walk along Via Giovanni Lanza. It's worth arriving with some time to spare, because the area around the theater is very busy at the end of a show.

What are the box office hours of Teatro Brancaccio?

The box office of Teatro Brancaccio is open Tuesday to Saturday from 16:00 to 19:00 and on Sundays on days when a performance is scheduled, while on Monday it stays closed. On the evening of the show the ticket window generally opens an hour before the start, but it's a practice that can vary depending on the production on the schedule.

Is Teatro Brancaccio accessible to people with disabilities?

Partly. Teatro Brancaccio has four seats in the orchestra reserved for people with motor disabilities who use a wheelchair, with their companions, and an accessible restroom on the ground floor. The balconies cannot be reached by wheelchair and there are no elevators to the upper levels, a structural limit of a 1916 building set into a hill.

Is Teatro Brancaccio suitable for children?

Yes, Teatro Brancaccio has family programming that is one of the stable legs of the schedule: children's theater occupies the weekends, matinees for schools fill the weekday mornings and theater workshops for children and teens run all year round. The big hall, with its generous slope, also suits shorter spectators.

When is the best time to go to Teatro Brancaccio to find fewer people?

Those looking for Teatro Brancaccio in its most comfortable form should aim for a Tuesday or Wednesday in January or February, when the same show has fewer people in the foyer and the best seats are still free. The busiest months run instead from November to March, with December as the absolute peak because of the Christmas performances of the big musicals.

Why is Teatro Brancaccio called the theater of Rome?

Romans call Teatro Brancaccio, with a certain proprietary ease, the theater of Rome: it isn't an official title but a way of speaking born over half a century of revue, variety shows, concerts and popular drama. Artists such as Ettore Petrolini, Totò, Anna Magnani, Aldo Fabrizi and Gigi Proietti have passed through its stage, and Proietti was also its artistic director from 2001 to 2007.

What kind of shows can you see at Teatro Brancaccio?

The programming of Teatro Brancaccio brings together large-scale musicals, contemporary dance, concerts and drama, with a season that runs from October to May and a tail into June. The backbone of the schedule is made of two or three large musicals that stay on stage for long periods, from two or three weeks up to a full month, around which the concerts fit.

Final Advice on Teatro Brancaccio

If I had to name one single reason to buy a ticket at the Brancaccio rather than elsewhere, I wouldn't cite the history or the names that passed through that stage. I'd say scale. In Rome there are theaters that are more beautiful, older, more noble. There are not many where an orchestra in the pit, a chorus of 40 people and a multi-level set all fit together without anyone having to give something up. Those who love musicals already know this. Those who don't should try it once, in a hall that really handles that format, instead of judging it from a reduced version seen in a theater that is too small.

And then there is the neighborhood. An evening at Teatro Brancaccio is an excuse to be in the Esquilino after sunset, which is the moment when that district is at its best. Take metro A to Vittorio Emanuele, walk along Via Merulana, go in without rushing. The stage does the rest. For those organizing a Roman day around the show, you can find itineraries and professional accompaniment services in the city on TourLeaderPro Roma, and for a group or a corporate event the quickest route is the TourLeaderPro contact page. If instead you're planning the trip in English, the guide to things to do in Rome by ItalyPlanner and the ItalyPlanner home page line up the reservations to make in advance.

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 guides to visiting the city are on ItalyPlanner.com.