Teatro Sistina

The Teatro Sistina is at Via Sistina 129, in Rome, in the Colonna rione, on the stretch of street that climbs from Piazza Barberini toward Trinità dei Monti. The reference stop is Barberini on metro line A, called in full Barberini-Fontana di Trevi and in service since February 16, 1980, from which you get there in three minutes on foot going up to the right. Alternatively you get off at Spagna, also line A, and walk down Via Sistina from Piazza Trinità dei Monti, which is the nicer walk of the two. The hall has about 1,600 seats, distributed between the orchestra and the gallery, and is 28 meters wide and 30 deep, without a single column interrupting the view. The calendar of shows, the prices of the individual sections, the subscription options and the box office hours change from season to season and should be read on the theater's official site before setting out. The Sistina is a production theater with long runs and daily performances, and it often happens that a popular title sells out whole weeks, weeks in advance. Anyone arriving by car has to reckon with a limited traffic zone and with paid garage parking in Piazza Barberini and Via Veneto area. The practical advice is to leave the car and take the metro.

If you are building a Roman itinerary that combines monuments and evenings out, the useful starting point is the page of tourist attractions of Rome, where the Sistina fits naturally with Via Veneto, with the Triton Fountain and with Piazza di Spagna.

Where the Teatro Sistina is and how to really get there

Rome has a habit of hiding its most frequented places behind corners that seem secondary. The Teatro Sistina is one of them. Anyone looking for it with their eyes up, expecting a monumental facade with columns and a pediment, risks walking right past it. The facade is sober, 20th-century in taste, wedged into the line of the houses on Via Sistina. What you see from the street is little more than a wide entrance, the posters and the flow of people crowding under the lights at 20:00. The real theater is all inside, and inside it is enormous.

The address of the Teatro Sistina and the rione that hosts it

The address is Via Sistina 129. We are in the Colonna rione, the third rione of Rome, the one that takes its name from the Column of Marcus Aurelius and that in medieval documents appears as Regio Columpne et sancte Marie in Aquiro, in reference to the church of Santa Maria in Aquiro. The rione's coat of arms is a white column on a red field. Colonna borders Ludovisi, Trevi, Pigna, Sant'Eustachio and Campo Marzio, and its boundaries are drawn by streets that everyone knows: Via del Corso, Piazza Barberini, Via del Pantheon. It is worth remembering that Ludovisi, the rione of Via Veneto, became autonomous only in 1921, carved out of the area of the Ludovisi villa subdivided between 1886 and 1906. It means that the piece of city in which the Sistina was born took on its present look very recently compared with the age of Rome: barely a century.

The Sistina, in short, is not a peripheral neighborhood theater and is not a theater of the ancient monumental center either. It is a theater of the Rome of the Umbertine era and the 20th century, that of hotels, cafes, tailor shops and film production companies, grown up astride the Quirinal and the Pincio. This location explains many things about its audience and its repertoire.

Metro, buses and the best walk to the Teatro Sistina

The metro solves almost everything. The Barberini station of line A entered service on February 16, 1980, with the first section of the line, and its full name is Barberini-Fontana di Trevi, chosen to point passengers toward the fountain. From the exit on Piazza Barberini you take Via Sistina and in a few hundred meters you are in front of the theater. It is a light climb, nothing demanding, but you feel it in evening shoes.

The second option is to get off at Spagna, also line A, exit toward Piazza di Spagna, go up by elevator or by the stairway to Piazza Trinità dei Monti and from there walk down Via Sistina. It is a good 10 minutes more, and I recommend it to anyone who arrives early and wants to earn the show. You pass in front of the facade of Trinità dei Monti with the view open over half the city, and you go down a street that in the 18th century hosted half of Europe on the Grand Tour.

The surface buses serve the axis of Via del Tritone and Piazza Barberini, and the reference stop is the one on the square. The lines change fairly often, so it is a good idea to check the updated route on the Rome public transport app the same day. Taxis find a stand in Piazza Barberini and in Piazza di Spagna. On the way out, at 23:00 with 1,600 people streaming out together, the taxi line is long. If you have a long way home, do the math and take the metro while it is open, or walk two blocks away before calling.

Getting to the Teatro Sistina by car: what to expect

The historic center of Rome is subject to traffic restrictions with hours that vary between weekdays, pre-holiday days and evenings. Via Sistina is not a street where you park. It is narrow, one-way, with hotel loading and unloading. The paid garages in Piazza Barberini and Via Veneto area solve the problem, at Rome city-center prices. Anyone who arrives from outside the city and wants to save time and nerves should leave the car at a park-and-ride on line A and do the last kilometers by metro. On the evening of a show, the time lost looking for a spot is worth more than the parking ticket.

The Teatro Sistina in numbers: the hall, the capacity, the box office

The number that counts is one: about 1,600 seats. It is a capacity that very few theaters for plays and musicals in Italy have, and that puts the Sistina in a category of its own. A theater of 1,600 seats cannot live on isolated evenings. It needs titles able to fill for weeks, productions of its own, an audience that comes back. Everything the Sistina has become follows from this arithmetic.

The hall of the Teatro Sistina: 28 meters by 30, without columns

The hall is 28 meters wide and 30 deep, and has no columns. The roof load is carried elsewhere, and the result is that from every tier of seats the stage can be seen whole. Anyone who has been to Italian-style theaters, with horseshoe boxes and little columns that cut the view, understands the difference at once. The Sistina is conceived as one large single hall, with a broad orchestra and a suspended gallery, following the logic of the modern movie house applied to the theater. It is not a technical detail. It is the reason why the big musical productions, with moving sets and mass choreography, work here and would not in an 18th-century hall.

The acoustic consequence is twofold. The single volume and the depth that is contained relative to the width give a full sound even in the last rows. On the other hand, a hall this vast almost always works with amplification, and the result depends a lot on the sound design of the individual production. In musicals with a live orchestra the difference between a central orchestra row and a side gallery seat is heard, and not a little.

Tickets, subscriptions and box office of the Teatro Sistina

Prices change from title to title and from section to section, and the same production can have different rates between weekdays and weekends. The season subscription options, the discounts for groups, schools and seniors, and any last-minute promotions are published on the theater's official site and at the box office on Via Sistina. Online purchase goes through the authorized seller that the theater itself indicates on its pages.

A warning worth its weight in gold that nobody gives: for high-demand titles, the moment you buy matters more than the price. The central orchestra seats in the first useful rows vanish in the first hours after sales open, and what is left two weeks before the performance is almost always on the side or high up. If the theater is the reason for the trip, you choose the date before the hotel.

Hours, duration and house rules at the Teatro Sistina

Start times vary. Weekday and Saturday evenings generally start in prime time, Sundays and holidays often have an afternoon performance. The duration depends on the title, and a musical with an intermission easily exceeds two and a half hours in total. The practical advice is to arrive 20 minutes early: the coat check, the gallery stairs and the entry flow of 1,600 people can't be squeezed into five minutes. Anyone who arrives after the show has started is seated only at the appropriate moments, as in all serious theaters, and risks watching the first scene standing at the back. Video and photo recording during the performance is not allowed. It is a contractual rule tied to the rights of the productions, not a whim of the usher.

The birth of the Teatro Sistina: a postwar construction site

The Teatro Sistina is a postwar building, and this explains all the rest. It was built between 1946 and 1949 to a design by Marcello Piacentini, the Roman architect born on December 8, 1881 and died on May 18, 1960, the most powerful name in Italian architecture of the previous 20 years. Piacentini had directed the plan of the University City of the Sapienza in 1935, had overseen the architecture of the 1942 Universal Exposition at EUR between 1938 and 1942, and had worked out with Attilio Spaccarelli the design of Via della Conciliazione between 1936 and 1950, with the demolition of the Spina di Borgo. He also had long practice with halls for entertainment: between 1915 and 1917 he had renovated the Corso cinema-theater at Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina.

Marcello Piacentini and the design of the hall of the Teatro Sistina

The Sistina is a late work of Piacentini, built when the architect, after a brief purge following the fall of Fascism, had already returned to university teaching. Critics have often judged his postwar output tired. The Sistina, however, is a case apart: here the problem was not to represent a regime, it was to build a show machine that worked. And it works. The renunciation of interior columns, the width of the hall, the relationship between orchestra and gallery, the sobriety of the interiors are choices of a professional who knew exactly how one watches a stage.

In our view the Sistina is architecturally the most honest of Piacentini's Roman buildings. It doesn't pretend to be monumental, it doesn't impose a rhetoric, it puts itself at the service of what happens on the stage. It is worth going in 10 minutes early and looking at the empty hall from the gallery, before the lights go down.

What was there before the Teatro Sistina: Santa Francesca Romana a Strada Felice

The building stands on the site of the church of Santa Francesca Romana a Strada Felice. It is the kind of urban replacement that has happened a thousand times in Rome in 26 centuries, and that almost none of the spectators know about: beneath the seats of the city's most popular theater lies the memory of a place of worship tied to the old name of the street, that Strada Felice wanted by Sixtus V. Anyone who loves Roman layers should find two minutes to think about it while waiting for the curtain to rise.

December 28, 1949: the Teatro Sistina opens as a cinema-theater

The inauguration took place on December 28, 1949, and the Sistina was born as a cinema-theater, not as a pure theater. The first title screened was Le mura di Malapaga. A few days later the theatrical programming began with Bada che ti mangio. This initial double nature is the key to understanding the building: the large hall, the total visibility, the absence of boxes come from a design conceived also for the screen. The theater took over the hall within a decade, but the hall had been designed for two trades.

In 1950, the year after the opening, the Sistina ended up inside a film. In the finale of Totò cerca moglie, directed by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia with Totò, Ave Ninchi, Marisa Merlini and Aroldo Tieri, the protagonists on the run take refuge in the just-built Palazzo Sistina, where the film itself is being screened: they see the poster, go in, and watch their own ending on the screen. It is a very refined metacinematic game for a popular comedy of 1950, and it is also the oldest visual document of the building in operation. Anyone in the mood for a themed evening should catch the film before going to the theater: recognizing the entrance on Via Sistina as it was 75 years ago is a small luxury.

The 1950s at the Teatro Sistina: mixed programming

Between 1950 and 1960 the Sistina lived on mixed programming, alternating cinema and stage. In 1950 La Bisarca was staged. In 1952 it was the turn of Attanasio cavallo vanesio. These are titles from a decade in which Italian revue was changing skin and in which a pair of Roman authors was inventing something that did not yet have a precise name. The theater and that pair were looking for each other.

Via Sistina, the street of Sixtus V that gives the Teatro Sistina its name

The theater takes its name from the street, and the street takes its name from a pope. Via Sistina was opened at the end of the 16th century by will of Sixtus V, under the direction of the architect Domenico Fontana. It was called Strada Felice, from the pontiff's baptismal name, Felice Peretti. The design was grandiose and for the time almost visionary: to link the Pincio hill to the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme passing through Santa Maria Maggiore, with a straight road of over two kilometers. Rome, which until then was a medieval tangle squeezed into the bend of the Tiber, began with Sixtus V to organize itself by axes, obelisks and vanishing points.

From Strada Felice to Via Sistina: how the name changed

During the 18th century that very long straight road was broken into stretches with different names, and only the final segment toward Trinità dei Monti kept the dedication to its founder, becoming Via Sistina. Today the street links Piazza Trinità dei Monti to Piazza Barberini: a few hundred meters on a slope, with shops, historic hotels and the discreet bulk of the theater. Anyone who walks it from the top understands better the Sistine logic of the city: you look to the end and see a precise point, not an alley that turns.

Along the street you pass notable buildings, among them Palazzo Dotti, from the 18th century, and the church of Santi Ildefonso e Tommaso da Villanova. Teatro Sistina sits on this row, and it is the only significant 20th-century building in a 17th- and 18th-century setting.

The illustrious neighbors of Teatro Sistina: Piranesi, Thorvaldsen, Gogol

On the façades of Via Sistina you can read plaques that recall residents of the very highest rank. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the Venetian engraver who taught Europe to imagine the Roman ruins. Bertel Thorvaldsen, the Danish sculptor who for decades kept one of the busiest studios of Neoclassicism in Rome. Nikolai Gogol, who worked on his masterpiece on this street. These names tell the real identity of the area in the 18th and 19th centuries: the quarter of cultured foreigners, of artists, of Grand Tour travelers who rented rooms a stone's throw from Piazza di Spagna.

When you enter Teatro Sistina to see a musical, you are entering a street that for two centuries was the international address of art in Rome. The theater, with its repertoire translated into 16 languages and taken around half the world, has carried on that vocation by other means.

Garinei and Giovannini, the hosts of Teatro Sistina

You can't tell the story of Teatro Sistina without telling the story of two men. Pietro Garinei, born in 1919 and died in 2006, and Sandro Giovannini, born in 1915 and died in 1977, met in the newsrooms of sports papers. From that meeting Italian musical comedy was born.

Cantachiaro, 1944: the beginning

The pair's debut was Cantachiaro, in 1944: a satirical revue with jazz music and with Anna Magnani. Rome had just come out of the occupation, the country was in pieces, and two broke young men with a wild imagination began to make a city laugh that had little to laugh about. In the years immediately after came dozens of revues, with ever more elaborate stagings and with the great soubrettes at the center of the stage.

From revue to musical comedy: 1952-1954

Around 1952 Garinei and Giovannini understood that the public's taste was changing, and they invented a new form that held together the American musical and the Italian revue tradition. The transitional trilogy is exact and worth learning: Attanasio cavallo vanesio in 1952, Alvaro piuttosto corsaro in 1953, Tobia la candida spia in 1954. With Giove in doppiopetto, also in 1954, the genre reached its mature form. These were no longer separate numbers with a final catwalk: they were stories, with characters, with songs that grew out of the plot.

1960: Garinei and Giovannini take over Teatro Sistina

In 1960 the pair took over Teatro Sistina. From that moment the theater stopped being a hall for rent and became a production house with a hall of its own: you wrote, rehearsed and debuted at the same address. The joint management lasted until Giovannini's death in 1977, then Pietro Garinei carried on alone until 2006. That is 46 years under the same helm, in a trade where companies last a season.

The working method of Garinei and Giovannini

They worked at a speed that would make any producer today turn pale: it happened that the actors signed the contract before the script was finished. A collaborator summed it up with a line that still circulates in Roman theater circles: G and G shows are like Valentino's clothes, tailored to fit the audience. Overall the pair signed 49 theatrical works and put on 85 tours in more than 20 countries.

On this point the verdict is blunt: Italian musical comedy is not a minor version of the Anglo-Saxon musical, it is a genre of its own, and anyone who dismisses it as light theater has never seen a second act by Garinei and Giovannini held up by comic timing built to the hundredth of a second. The Sistina is the place where that grammar was written.

The titles that made the history of Teatro Sistina

Here we get into the repertoire, and it's best to proceed in chronological order, because every title changed something.

Rugantino, December 15, 1962

Rugantino debuted at Teatro Sistina on December 15, 1962. The text is by Garinei and Giovannini with Pasquale Festa Campanile and Massimo Franciosa, the music by Armando Trovajoli, the sets and costumes by Giulio Coltellacci, the choreography by Dania Krupska. On stage were Nino Manfredi in the title role, Aldo Fabrizi as Mastro Titta, the papal executioner, and Lea Massari as Rosetta.

The protagonist is a young braggart, arrogant and allergic to any kind of effort, who gets by with the help of his accomplice Eusebia in the papal Rome of the 19th century. The ending, with the guillotine, has a harshness nobody expects from a musical comedy: it is the reason Rugantino doesn't age. And inside it there is Roma nun fa la stupida stasera, the song that any Roman can sing without ever having learned it.

After the Roman triumph the show reached Broadway in February 1964, at the Mark Hellinger Theatre, where for three weeks the box office recorded sold-out houses. From 1962 to 2020 there are nine productions: very few Italian titles have such a long stage life.

Il giorno della tartaruga, October 26, 1964

Il giorno della tartaruga opened at the Sistina on October 26, 1964, signed by Garinei and Giovannini with text and lyrics by Massimo Franciosa and Luigi Magni. The leads were Renato Rascel, as Lorenzo, and Delia Scala, as Maria. The story is that of a marital quarrel that stretches out: on his birthday the surveyor Lorenzo receives a trivial gift instead of the one he was expecting, and from there the two throw everything in each other's face, furniture, vacations, money, relatives, going back over their whole life together until a hidden misunderstanding is finally cleared up.

The staging idea is memorable: the two actors stay on stage for the whole show and change clothes in plain view, never going back to the dressing room. For 1964 it was an idea of rare boldness in a popular theater, and it still holds up today.

Ciao Rudy, January 7, 1966

Ciao Rudy debuted at Teatro Sistina on January 7, 1966. Garinei and Giovannini wrote the text with Luigi Magni, the music is by Armando Trovajoli. The comedy tells the life of Rodolfo Valentino, the Italian-American star, from his arrival in America as an emigrant to his last days, with the search for four palms of land in California at its center. In the title role, singing and dancing, was Marcello Mastroianni, and alongside him, among others, Raffaella Carrà, Paola Borboni and Ilaria Occhini.

The success was great, the run short: Mastroianni broke the contract to go work with Federico Fellini. The show returned in 1972 with Alberto Lionello as Valentino. It is the episode that says better than any other what the Sistina was in those years: a theater able to bring the leading man of Italian cinema onto the stage to sing.

Alleluja brava gente, December 24, 1970

On Christmas Eve 1970 the Sistina opened Alleluja brava gente, written by Garinei and Giovannini in collaboration with Iaia Fiastri, with music by Domenico Modugno and Renato Rascel. On stage were Renato Rascel and Gigi Proietti in the two main roles, with Mariangela Melato.

The comedy tells of two likable swindlers on the threshold of the year 1000, who sell fake remedies for eternal youth. When the apocalyptic legends about the millennium spread, nobody wants their potions anymore, and the plot explodes when Ademar, the son of a Sicilian prostitute who passes himself off as an Eastern prince, is mistaken for the prophesied saint, able to work miracles. From there it is all an escalation of deceptions, resurrections and redemptions. Ademar's line that Romans still quote goes like this: a man without a dream is like a falcon whose wings were cut, and whose soaring flight toward the ocean was taken away.

Aggiungi un posto a tavola, December 8, 1974

It is the most famous title to come out of this stage. Aggiungi un posto a tavola debuted at Teatro Sistina on December 8, 1974, after 70 days of rehearsals. The authors were Pietro Garinei and Sandro Giovannini with Iaia Fiastri, music by Armando Trovajoli, choreography by Gino Landi, sets and costumes by Giulio Coltellacci. The source is David Forrest's novel After Me the Deluge, in Italian Dopo di me il diluvio.

The original cast is a snapshot of the Italy of the time: Johnny Dorelli as the young parish priest, Paolo Panelli as the mayor, Bice Valori as Consolazione, Daniela Goggi as Clementina. The story of the priest who receives phone calls from above and builds an ark in a mountain village has formidable comic staying power and an undercurrent of sweetness that explains the show's longevity.

Aggiungi un posto a tavola has gone around the world: London, Vienna, Lübeck, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Chile, Mexico City, Caracas, São Paulo. And it has kept coming back: the main productions are counted in 1978, in 1990, in 2002 and 2003, from 2009 to 2011, in 2013 and 2014, from 2017 to 2019, between 2019 and 2020 and again in 2024. Half a century of repeat performances.

Rinaldo in campo and the titles born outside Teatro Sistina

Not all of Garinei and Giovannini's masterpieces debuted on Via Sistina. Rinaldo in campo opened on September 12, 1961 at Teatro Alfieri in Turin, on the occasion of Italia 61, the year of the centenary of Italian unification. Music by Domenico Modugno, orchestrations with Nello Ciangherotti, choreography by Herbert Ross, sets and costumes by Giulio Coltellacci. The lead was Modugno himself as the bandit Rinaldo Dragonera, a sort of Sicilian Robin Hood who steals from the rich to help the poor and who, for love of Angelica, ends up in Garibaldi's ranks against the Bourbons. With him were Delia Scala, Paolo Panelli, and in the company also Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia.

The show stayed four months at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and was translated into Russian and Serbian for the productions in Moscow and Belgrade. It returned to the stage in 1987 and 2011: the latter production, directed by Massimo Romeo Piparo, went through the Sistina stage.

Armando Trovajoli, the sound of Teatro Sistina

If the Sistina has a tone, he gave it. Armando Trovajoli, a Roman, born on September 2, 1917 and died at his home in Rome on March 1, 2013 at the age of 95, studied violin as a child and graduated in piano and composition from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, completing his studies in 1948. Even before that he was a real jazz musician: in 1949 he represented Italy at the Paris Jazz Festival, at the Salle Pleyel, alongside Gorni Kramer and Gil Cuppini.

For Garinei and Giovannini he wrote the music of Rugantino in 1962, of Ciao Rudy and of Aggiungi un posto a tavola. Roma nun fa la stupida stasera became his third worldwide hit. He received the special David di Donatello in 2007 and the Federico Fellini 8 and a Half Prize at the Bari international festival in 2010. On May 30, 2013, Rome named the Ponte della Musica in Flaminio after him, and it is now called Ponte della Musica-Armando Trovajoli.

A piece of advice: before going to see a historic title at the Sistina, listen to Trovajoli's scores. It's jazz dressed up as popular song, with harmonies that no Italian musical author has had the courage to use since.

Teatro Sistina after Garinei: the recent managements

When Pietro Garinei died in 2006, the theater faced the most delicate transition of its history. Between 2006 and 2009 it was led by Gianmario Longoni together with Enzo Garinei, Pietro's brother and an actor tied to the house, and from 2009 to 2013 the direction stayed with Longoni. Since 2013 the artistic director has been Massimo Romeo Piparo.

The ministerial recognition and the Golden Tickets

From March 2003 to 2015 Teatro Sistina was recognized by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities as the Resident Theater of Italian Musical Comedy. It is a unique recognition on the national scene, and it says what the Sistina represents: not a hall that hosts musicals, but the reference institution of an Italian genre.

In 2008 the theater won two AGIS Golden Tickets: one as the hall with the highest number of spectators, the other for the success of Peter Pan il musical, with Manuel Frattini, which for two seasons was the most-watched show in Italy. These are the numbers that consolidated the Sistina's reputation as the country's foremost theater of popular production.

Massimo Romeo Piparo and Teatro Sistina today

Massimo Romeo Piparo was born in Messina on December 17, 1967. He studied modern literature at the University of Messina, where in the 2006-2007 academic year he also taught directing techniques. Before the Sistina he had directed the Teatro Greco di Tindari in 1995, the Teatro Nazionale in Milan from 2000 to 2004 and the Teatro Stabile di Messina from 2005 to 2007. Since July 2013 he has been the artistic director of Teatro Sistina.

His directing signature has brought the great international repertoire to Rome with top-rank casts: Jesus Christ Superstar with Ted Neeley, Yvonne Elliman and Barry Dennen, three performers tied to the 1973 film version, My Fair Lady with Luca Ward and Vittoria Belvedere, Billy Elliot in 2015, The Full Monty in 2012 and then between 2019 and 2020, Mamma Mia! between 2017 and 2018 and again in 2022, Evita with Malika Ayane, Cats between 2022 and 2024, again with Malika Ayane. He received the Flaiano Prize for theater directing in 2014 and for the musical in 2018.

In 2015 the Sistina staged Il Marchese del Grillo, which in five weeks passed 50,000 spectators. It is the figure that best tells the scale of this theater: big-event numbers, in a hall on Via Sistina.

Alongside the programming, the management has developed the Accademia Sistina, the performing arts school tied to the theater and aimed at young people. If you have kids with a fixation on the stage, ask the theater directly: the courses, the ages admitted and the enrollment procedures change from year to year.

The ongoing production of Teatro Sistina

The Sistina is not a theater that rents out the hall and waits. It produces. Over the years it has put on revivals of the house's historic titles and new stagings, keeping together the Garinei and Giovannini repertoire and the great international titles. The formula is a long schedule, with a few productions kept on stage for weeks rather than a different title every night. In Italy very few do this, because it requires a stable production structure and an audience that responds.

The theater of the Romans: why Teatro Sistina is different from the others

Two labels have stuck to this address and won't leave: the theater of the Romans and the Scala of Italian musical comedy. The first is affectionate and comes from below, from the audience that has filled the hall for decades. The second is ambitious and comes from the comparison with Milan's temple of opera. They are both true.

The Sistina has a trait that seems obvious to Romans and not to foreign visitors: it is a popular theater without being provincial. The Saturday night audience mixes families, groups of friends, elderly couples who have been coming for 40 years and kids who discovered musicals on the internet. There is none of the intimidating liturgy of certain opera houses, and none of the sloppiness of mass-market theater either. People applaud in the middle of a scene, laugh loudly, and at the end walk out humming.

Anyone who still today heads toward Termini station whistling Arrivederci Roma, or who improvises an improbable Rugantino by singing Roma nun fa la stupida stasera to make an impression, is carrying on, without knowing it, a repertoire born on this stage.

What an evening at Teatro Sistina is like

What time to arrive and where to wait

The Sistina's foyer is not very big for 1,600 people. With 20 minutes to spare you pick up your ticket, leave your coat and find your seat without rushing. With five minutes you go in at a run. If you have a balcony seat, consider that the climb takes a few minutes more. In winter the line in front of the coat check, on the way out, is the real bottleneck of the evening: if you're in a hurry to catch the last metro, consider keeping your coat in your arms.

Where to sit at Teatro Sistina: our opinion

For a musical with an orchestra and group choreography, the best seat is not the front row. It is the center of the orchestra section between the seventh and the 15th row, where the whole picture reads clearly and the sound arrives balanced. The center of the first balcony is an excellent compromise between quality and price, and for certain stagings with complex choreographic geometry it is even better than the orchestra section. The extreme sides are fine for plays and less so for shows with deep sets. Said without diplomacy: if the budget is limited, a good center balcony beats an orchestra seat at the side.

Before and after the show, around Teatro Sistina

The area is full of places to eat and drink, with the price variability typical of central Rome between Piazza Barberini and Via Veneto. A quick dinner before eight is easier than finding a table at 11 at night. If you want to stretch the evening, go up to Piazza Trinità dei Monti after the show: the lit-up staircase and half of Rome below are worth the 10-minute detour, and at 11 at night there are fewer people than at noon.

Teatro Sistina with children and teenagers

It is one of the few Roman theaters where taking a child is not a gamble. The great family repertoire titles, from musicals based on classics to revivals of the historic musical comedies, hold up very well from seven or eight years old and up. Under six you have to look at the individual title and the running time: two and a half hours with an intermission is a lot for someone who is five.

Two practical tips. The first: for the youngest the orchestra section is better, where the height of the shoulders in front is less of a penalty than in the balcony, and ask for a booster seat if the theater provides one. The second: Sunday afternoon performances are the most sensible choice with children, both for the time and for the makeup of the audience. The rules on minimum admission age and on reduced tickets for the youngest change from production to production and are checked at the time of purchase.

Accessibility of Teatro Sistina

The hall is laid out on an orchestra level and a balcony, and the balcony is reached by stairs. For spectators with mobility difficulties or in a wheelchair, the orchestra section is the solution, but the number of equipped seats is limited and must be requested in advance at the box office, stating the specific needs: it is the surest way to get an appropriate placement and to know which entrance to use. The Barberini metro station also has a configuration with stairs and escalators between street level, the concourse and the platforms: if you have mobility problems, consider arriving by taxi directly on Via Sistina. Up-to-date information on the welcome services should be requested from the theater before purchase.

What to see around Teatro Sistina within a 10-minute walk

Few theaters in the world have a 10-minute radius this dense. It's worth arriving an hour early and turning the wait into a stroll.

Piazza Barberini and the Triton Fountain

At the foot of Via Sistina opens Piazza Barberini with the Triton Fountain, sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini between 1642 and 1643 on commission from Pope Urban VIII Barberini. It is made of travertine: four dolphins with intertwined tails hold up a large open bivalve shell, and above it the Triton blows into a conical shell. Between the dolphins' tails are set the papal coats of arms with the three bees, the heraldic emblem of the Barberini. The iconographic program is a dynastic exaltation: the bees for divine providence and for the triumph of the family, the dolphins for papal beneficence, the Triton announcing the pope's magnificence. The fountain has had many restorations, among them those of 1932, of 1987 and 1988, of 1990, of 1991 and 1992, of 1998 and finally that of November 2013, which removed the biological and limescale deposits, giving the travertine back its original color, and which sparked more than one discussion about the method.

Worth knowing that this area, until the 19th century, was essentially a space outside the city, between the Quirinal Hill and the Gardens of Sallust. The monumental square we see today is the result of recent growth of the city.

Via Veneto, a stone's throw from Teatro Sistina

From the square branches off Via Veneto, the street of Fellini's dolce vita, with its hotels and its historic cafes. At the corner with Via Veneto stands the Fontana delle Api, also from Bernini's circle and also with the Barberini emblem. If you have half an hour before the show, walk up it as far as Porta Pinciana: it is a piece of 20th-century Rome that reads like a novel.

Palazzo Barberini and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica

On the other side of the square rises Palazzo Barberini, which houses part of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica. You don't visit it in half an hour before a show: it is a half-day museum. But Borromini's helical staircase and Pietro da Cortona's ceiling are 200 meters from the theater's foyer, and this closeness says everything about the layering of this piece of the city.

Trinità dei Monti, Piazza di Spagna and the Trevi Fountain

Heading uphill, Via Sistina ends at Trinità dei Monti, with the obelisk and the view of the staircase that descends to Piazza di Spagna and the Barcaccia Fountain. On the other side, going down Via del Tritone, in 10 minutes you reach the Trevi Fountain, which also gives its name to the metro station. A little further on open Piazza Colonna, with the column that gave the district its name, and Via del Corso. On the Quirinal, just under a quarter of an hour away, are the Quirinal Palace and the Scuderie del Quirinale with their big exhibitions.

Frequently asked questions about Teatro Sistina

Where is Teatro Sistina?

Teatro Sistina is at Via Sistina 129, in Rome, in the Colonna district, on the stretch of street between Piazza Barberini and Piazza Trinità dei Monti. The façade is sober, 20th-century in taste, wedged into the line of the street's houses, and anyone looking for it expecting columns and a pediment risks walking right past it.

What is the nearest metro stop to Teatro Sistina?

The nearest metro stop to Teatro Sistina is Barberini, on Line A, in service since February 16, 1980: from there it is about three minutes on foot uphill. Alternatively you can get off at Spagna, also on Line A.

How many seats does Teatro Sistina have?

Teatro Sistina has about 1,600 seats, a capacity that very few theaters for plays and musicals in Italy have. It is a size that puts the theater in a category of its own and explains why it hosts its own productions able to stay on the bill for weeks.

Is Teatro Sistina suitable for children?

Teatro Sistina is one of the few Roman theaters where taking a child is not a gamble, especially for the great family repertoire titles, which hold up well from seven or eight years old and up. Under six you have to judge the individual title, because two and a half hours with an intermission is a lot for a five-year-old.

Is Teatro Sistina wheelchair accessible?

At Teatro Sistina the orchestra section is the most practical solution for people with mobility difficulties or who use a wheelchair, while the balcony is reached only by stairs. The number of equipped seats is limited and must be requested in advance at the box office, stating the specific needs.

What time should you arrive at Teatro Sistina?

At Teatro Sistina it's best to arrive 20 minutes early to pick up your ticket, leave your coat and find your seat without rushing. With five minutes you go in at a run. If you have a balcony seat, allow a few more minutes for the climb.

Who made Teatro Sistina famous?

Teatro Sistina owes its fame to Pietro Garinei, born in 1919 and died in 2006, and Sandro Giovannini, born in 1915 and died in 1977, the two authors who invented Italian musical comedy right in this hall. Since 2013 the theater's artistic direction has been Massimo Romeo Piparo's.

What is the most famous show born at Teatro Sistina?

The most famous show born at Teatro Sistina is Rugantino, which debuted on December 15, 1962 with Nino Manfredi as the lead, Aldo Fabrizi as Mastro Titta and Lea Massari as Rosetta, text by Garinei and Giovannini and music by Armando Trovajoli. The show then went to Broadway too.

If you are organizing a trip to Rome with a packed agenda and want to understand how to fit museums, monuments and evenings together without rushing, you'll find useful material in the practical guides TourLeaderPro dedicated to Rome, designed for people who lead groups but perfectly readable by an individual traveler too.

A curiosity about Teatro Sistina

The best curiosity involves a film and a game of mirrors. In 1950, a few months after the opening, Teatro Sistina ended up inside the finale of Totò cerca moglie, a comedy directed by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia with Totò, Ave Ninchi as Aunt Agata, Marisa Merlini and Aroldo Tieri. In the closing sequence the protagonists, on the run, take refuge in the newly built Palazzo Sistina, where the very film the audience in the theater is watching is being screened. They see the poster at the entrance, go in out of curiosity, and watch their own ending: they see themselves getting married on the screen.

It is a meta-cinematic vertigo worthy of far more distinguished authors, slipped inside a popular Italian comedy of 1950. And it has a precious side effect: whoever rewatches that scene today sees the brand-new building, with the entrance on Via Sistina as it looked in its first year of life, before it became what it was going to become.

There is a second curiosity, less cinematic and more Roman. Teatro Sistina was born as a cinema-theater, not as a theater. The first title shown on that screen on December 28, 1949 was Le mura di Malapaga, and plays arrived a few days later with Bada che ti mangio. For a decade the hall lived balanced between the two vocations. Musical comedy, which would make this address famous around half the world, was in nobody's plans: it came later, and took everything.

A third curiosity, for those who love layers beneath layers: the theater stands on the site of the church of Santa Francesca Romana a Strada Felice. Strada Felice was the original name of Via Sistina, from the given name of Sixtus V, Felice Peretti. Beneath the seats of the theater most loved by Romans there is therefore the memory of a church and of an urban planning project of the late 16th century. Rome does that: it doesn't erase, it overlays.

Something nobody tells you about Teatro Sistina

Nobody tells you that Teatro Sistina is, technically, a building by Marcello Piacentini. The name of the most debated architect of 20th-century Italy almost never appears in the theater's presentations, which talk about Garinei and Giovannini, about Rugantino and about musicals. Yet the hall was built between 1946 and 1949 to his design, and it is one of his last Roman works: Piacentini was born on December 8, 1881 and would die on May 18, 1960, the exact year Garinei and Giovannini took over the theater.

This is not a detail for scholars, because the design explains why at the Sistina you see well from every seat. The hall is 28 meters wide and 30 deep, and it has no columns: the structural choice that allows the view from every tier of seats. Anyone who knows Italian-style horseshoe theaters, where the little columns of the boxes cut across the stage and where there are seats openly sold as restricted view, understands how much this difference weighs. The Sistina is conceived as a single large volume, with the eye of the modern movie theater.

The second fact that is never told is economic, and it determines everything else. With about 1,600 seats, the Sistina belongs to a category of halls that in Italy can be counted on the fingers. A capacity like that imposes a precise production choice: few titles per season, kept on stage for weeks, with big-event investments. The Sistina doesn't run a series of different evenings every night. It does the long run. When the public says that at the Sistina you see the big shows, it is describing, without knowing it, an arithmetic consequence of the number of seats.

Third little-known element: from March 2003 to 2015 the theater held from the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities the recognition as the Resident Theater of Italian Musical Comedy. It is a qualification that no other Italian hall has had for that genre. It means that the State, for 12 years, formally recognized that Italian musical comedy is a cultural heritage and that its address is Via Sistina.

The advice I give you for visiting Teatro Sistina

The first piece of advice is about when, and it counts for more than anything else: choose the date before everything else on the trip. The strong titles on the bill sell out the central sections in the first hours of sales, and anyone who shows up two weeks before the performance finds almost only side or high seats. If the reason for the trip is the show, the correct sequence is ticket, then hotel, then train or plane.

The second piece of advice is about where to sit, and here the verdict is clear. The best seat for a musical with an orchestra and ensemble choreography is not the front row of the orchestra section, where you lose the overall design and look at the orchestra from below. It is the center of the orchestra section between the seventh and the 15th row. The center of the first balcony is the real bargain of the Sistina, because it costs less and gives you back the whole stage layout. Between a side orchestra seat and a center balcony seat at the same price, choose the balcony without thinking.

Third piece of advice, about timing. Arrive 20 minutes early. It is not pedantry: 1,600 people, a foyer of normal size, a coat check and a stair to the balcony make a real line. Anyone who comes in after the show has started is seated only at suitable breaks and misses the first scene, which in musicals is almost always the number that sets everything up.

Fourth piece of advice, for those coming from outside Rome: use Metro Line A. Barberini is three minutes on foot uphill, Spagna is 10 minutes downhill and gives you the view from Trinità dei Monti. A car in this area is a problem, with traffic restrictions and expensive garages. The suggestion is to leave your vehicles far away and treat the approach on foot as part of the evening.

Fifth and last: prepare for the evening. If you are going to see a revival of Rugantino or Aggiungi un posto a tavola, listen to Armando Trovajoli's music first. If you are going to an international title, read up on the plot in five minutes. The Sistina rewards the prepared spectator, because the pleasure of recognizing a musical theme when it comes back in the second act is half the fun.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely cited

Everybody knows Rugantino was born at Teatro Sistina. Almost nobody remembers that Rugantino went to Broadway. The show debuted on Via Sistina on December 15, 1962, with Nino Manfredi as the lead, Aldo Fabrizi as Mastro Titta and Lea Massari as Rosetta, text by Garinei and Giovannini with Pasquale Festa Campanile and Massimo Franciosa, music by Armando Trovajoli, sets and costumes by Giulio Coltellacci, choreography by Dania Krupska. In February 1964 the company arrived in New York, at the Mark Hellinger Theatre, and for three weeks the box office recorded sold-out houses.

The fact deserves to be repeated more often, because it tells something we now take for lost: in the 1960s a Roman theater exported its own repertoire to the world capital of the musical, in Roman dialect, with the guillotine in the finale. And it wasn't an isolated case. Rinaldo in campo, written by Garinei and Giovannini with music by Domenico Modugno and debuted on September 12, 1961 at Teatro Alfieri in Turin, stayed four months at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and was translated into Russian and Serbian for Moscow and Belgrade. Aggiungi un posto a tavola traveled through London, Vienna, Lübeck, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Chile, Mexico City, Caracas and São Paulo.

Overall Garinei and Giovannini signed 49 theatrical works and put on 85 tours in more than 20 countries. Italian musical comedy was, for 30 years, an export cultural product. The fact is well known and rarely cited, perhaps because it doesn't suit those who tell Italian theater as a purely domestic affair.

I'll add the opinion, no discounts: the international season of Italian musical comedy ended not for lack of talent, but because there was no one to put writing, music and production together under the same roof for 40 years in a row. The Sistina was that roof.

The right photo to take at Teatro Sistina

First the wrong photo, because it's the one everybody takes: the frontal facade, in full daylight, with the sun flattening everything and cars double-parked in front of the entrance. Via Sistina is narrow and sloping, there isn't enough setback for a clean frontal shot, and the result is a photo without air.

The right photo at Teatro Sistina is taken at dusk, from the opposite side of the street, at an angle, framing the lit-up posters and the flow of people going in. The light of the signs at blue hour, that half hour when the sky is still blue but the artificial lights are already on, holds the two exposures together without burning anything. If you wait for full dark you lose the sky and you're left with a black rectangle above the entrance. Focus on the posters, keep the sensor at low sensitivity and lean against a wall instead of raising the ISO.

The second framing, the one nobody tries, is taken from the top of the street, coming down from Piazza Trinità dei Monti. From there Via Sistina reads in perspective, with the theater on the left and Piazza Barberini at the end, and the slope gives the photo a depth that doesn't exist from below. It is the Sistine point of view of the street, the one the axis was laid out for.

The third is the most beautiful and the hardest: the audience coming out. At 11 at night, with the doors open and the hall emptying, the warm light of the foyer throws onto the street the silhouettes of people talking, laughing and humming. Slow shutter speeds, a steady support, and you wait for someone to stop and light a cigarette under the posters. That photograph tells what the theater of the Romans really is, much better than the façade.

Inside the hall, during the show, you don't take photos and you don't shoot video: it is a rule tied to the rights of the productions and it applies in every serious theater in the world. If you want the hall in the frame, photograph it empty before the start, from the balcony, with the curtain closed: 28 meters of width without a column is a remarkable architectural subject.

Some important events that happened here in history

On December 28, 1949 Teatro Sistina opens as a cinema-theater, with the screening of Le mura di Malapaga. A few days later the stage goes into operation with Bada che ti mangio. It is the birth certificate of a building that would become the most popular theater in Rome.

In 1950 the hall is absorbed into the finale of Totò cerca moglie, with the protagonists taking refuge in the newly built Palazzo Sistina and watching their own epilogue on the screen. The same year the stage hosts La Bisarca, and in 1952 comes Attanasio cavallo vanesio, first chapter of the trilogy with which Garinei and Giovannini ferry the revue toward musical comedy.

In 1960 Garinei and Giovannini take over the theater. From that moment the Sistina is both production house and hall: you write, rehearse and debut at the same address. It is the event that changes everything.

On December 15, 1962 Rugantino debuts. In February 1964 the company is on Broadway, at the Mark Hellinger Theatre, with three weeks of sold-out houses. On October 26, 1964 Il giorno della tartaruga opens with Renato Rascel and Delia Scala, who stay on stage for the whole running time, changing clothes in plain view. On January 7, 1966 it is the turn of Ciao Rudy, with Marcello Mastroianni singing and dancing as Rodolfo Valentino: a leading man of Italian cinema lent to the musical, an unprecedented event.

On December 24, 1970 the Sistina opens Alleluja brava gente, with Renato Rascel and Gigi Proietti and with Mariangela Melato, music by Domenico Modugno and Rascel himself. On December 8, 1974, after 70 days of rehearsals, Aggiungi un posto a tavola debuts with Johnny Dorelli, Paolo Panelli, Bice Valori and Daniela Goggi: the show that would be performed for half a century.

In 1977 Sandro Giovannini dies and Pietro Garinei carries on alone at the head of the theater, until his own death in 2006. In March 2003 the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities grants the Sistina the status of Resident Theater of Italian Musical Comedy, which the theater will keep until 2015.

In the summer of 2008 the Sistina wins two AGIS Golden Tickets: one as the theater with the highest number of spectators, the other for the success of Peter Pan il musical with Manuel Frattini, for two seasons the most-watched show in Italy. Between 2006 and 2013 the direction passes to Gianmario Longoni, first with Enzo Garinei and then alone. Since July 2013 the artistic director has been Massimo Romeo Piparo. In 2015 Il Marchese del Grillo passes 50,000 spectators in five weeks, a big-event number for a hall on Via Sistina.

Who has passed through Teatro Sistina

The list is long and worth running through by generation, because it tells the whole of Italian entertainment in the second half of the 20th century.

On the authors' side, Pietro Garinei and Sandro Giovannini lived in this theater from 1960, and with them passed the collaborators who defined its sound and look: Armando Trovajoli on the music of Rugantino, Ciao Rudy and Aggiungi un posto a tavola, Domenico Modugno for Rinaldo in campo and Alleluja brava gente, Iaia Fiastri on the writing, Giulio Coltellacci on sets and costumes, Gino Landi and Dania Krupska on choreography, Luigi Magni, Massimo Franciosa and Pasquale Festa Campanile on the texts.

On the performers' side, the Sistina saw Nino Manfredi become Rugantino in December 1962, with Aldo Fabrizi as the executioner Mastro Titta and Lea Massari as Rosetta. It saw Renato Rascel and Delia Scala hold the stage alone through the whole of Il giorno della tartaruga in 1964. It saw Marcello Mastroianni sing Rodolfo Valentino in January 1966, alongside Raffaella Carrà, Paola Borboni and Ilaria Occhini. It saw Gigi Proietti and Mariangela Melato next to Rascel at Christmas 1970. It saw Johnny Dorelli, Paolo Panelli, Bice Valori and Daniela Goggi open Aggiungi un posto a tavola in December 1974.

In the most recent seasons, performers from the international repertoire who tied their names to specific titles have passed through this stage: Ted Neeley, Yvonne Elliman and Barry Dennen in Jesus Christ Superstar, Luca Ward and Vittoria Belvedere in My Fair Lady, Malika Ayane in Evita and then in Cats, Manuel Frattini in Peter Pan il musical.

Enzo Biagi, who was a spectator and chronicler of this theater, wrote a page that Romans still remember, listing the names on the Garinei and Giovannini posters: the Quartetto Cetra with the grace of Lucia Mannucci, the Bluebell girls, Wanda Osiris trading lines with Alberto Sordi in the bitter part of a vaudeville ham, the Kessler twins, the couple formed by Delia Scala and Walter Chiari, Marcello Mastroianni in the almost obvious part of Rodolfo Valentino, Nino Manfredi, Paolo Panelli and Bice Valori. And also Renato Rascel, a tiny little cuirassier who seemed born from the inventions of Chaplin and Chekhov, Johnny Dorelli torn away from song, Gino Bramieri, the Aldo Fabrizi of Rugantino, the Modugno of Rinaldo in campo, Enrico Montesano as actor, dancer, impersonator and storyteller. Biagi's conclusion is the best possible epigraph for this address: Garinei and Giovannini offered everyone the big chance, they never got a script or a staging wrong, they always respected the audience, they left their mark on our stages and on our customs too.

On the management side, besides Garinei and Giovannini, Enzo Garinei and Gianmario Longoni passed through here between 2006 and 2013, and since July 2013 Massimo Romeo Piparo, who before the Sistina had directed the Teatro Greco di Tindari in 1995, the Teatro Nazionale in Milan from 2000 to 2004 and the Teatro Stabile di Messina from 2005 to 2007, and who received the Flaiano Prize for theater directing in 2014 and for the musical in 2018.

Teatro Sistina and the other theaters of Rome

Understanding the Sistina also means understanding what it is not. Rome has a broad theater system and every hall has a recognizable vocation, and anyone planning a week in the city would do well to spread the evenings out instead of concentrating them.

Sistina and Teatro dell'Opera: two different worlds

The Rome Opera House is the home of melodrama and ballet, with a resident orchestra and chorus and a completely different liturgy of the evening. The Sistina is the theater of musical comedy and the musical, with amplification, choreography and a much more direct relationship with the audience. Calling the Sistina the Scala of Italian musical comedy makes sense precisely in the comparison: same ambition for excellence, opposite repertoire.

Sistina, Brancaccio and Olimpico: who does what

The Teatro Brancaccio, on the Esquiline, alternates musicals, concerts and big guests, with a more variable programming. The Teatro Olimpico, in Flaminio, is the hall for contemporary dance, big comedy shows and passing international productions. The Sistina stands out for the long run: few titles, many weeks, its own production. If you have three evenings in Rome and want to understand the city from the stage, take one evening at the Sistina, one at the Opera and one in a theater for plays, and you will have seen three different Romes.

Quick questions about Teatro Sistina

Where is Teatro Sistina?

At Via Sistina 129, in Rome, in the Colonna district, on the stretch of street between Piazza Barberini and Piazza Trinità dei Monti.

What is the metro stop for Teatro Sistina?

Barberini, on Line A, whose full name is Barberini-Fontana di Trevi, in service since February 16, 1980. From there it is three minutes on foot uphill. Alternatively you get off at Spagna, also Line A, and arrive in about 10 minutes by way of Trinità dei Monti.

How many seats does Teatro Sistina have?

About 1,600, divided between the orchestra section and the balcony.

How much does a ticket for Teatro Sistina cost?

The price changes from title to title, from section to section and between weekdays and weekends. Up-to-date rates and subscription options are published on the theater's official site and available at the box office on Via Sistina.

How do you buy tickets for Teatro Sistina?

At the theater's box office or online, through the authorized seller indicated by the theater itself on its official pages.

Do you need to book ahead for Teatro Sistina?

For the big-draw titles yes, and well in advance: the center sections of the orchestra and first balcony sell out in the first hours of sales. For mid-season weekday performances it is easier to find seats.

What is the best seat at Teatro Sistina?

For a musical, the center of the orchestra section between the seventh and the 15th row. The center of the first balcony is the best ratio of price to view. The extreme sides are fine for plays, less so for stagings with deep sets.

Can you see well from the balcony of Teatro Sistina?

Yes. The hall is 28 meters wide and 30 deep and has no columns, so the stage is fully visible from every tier of seats. The balcony is reached by stairs.

How long does a show at Teatro Sistina last?

It depends on the title. A musical with an intermission easily runs more than two and a half hours in total. The exact running time of each production is indicated by the theater.

Can you take photos during the show at Teatro Sistina?

No. Video recording and photographs during the performance are not allowed, for reasons tied to the rights of the productions. You can photograph the hall before the start and the outside of the theater.

Is Teatro Sistina suitable for children?

Very much so, from seven or eight years old and up, especially with family repertoire titles. Under six the running time of the show must be considered. Sunday afternoon performances are the most convenient choice with the youngest.

Is Teatro Sistina wheelchair accessible?

The orchestra section is the reference area for spectators with mobility difficulties, but the equipped seats are limited in number and must be requested in advance at the box office, which also indicates the entrance to use.

Is there a coat check at Teatro Sistina?

Yes, and it is much used in winter. On the way out it is where the longest line forms: if you have a train or the last metro to catch, consider keeping your coat with you.

Who designed Teatro Sistina?

Marcello Piacentini, born in Rome on December 8, 1881 and died on May 18, 1960. The building was built between 1946 and 1949.

When did Teatro Sistina open?

On December 28, 1949, as a cinema-theater. The first film shown was Le mura di Malapaga, and the theatrical programming began a few days later with Bada che ti mangio.

Why is it called Teatro Sistina?

After the street it faces, Via Sistina, opened in the late 16th century at the will of Sixtus V to a design by Domenico Fontana and originally called Strada Felice, from the pope's given name, Felice Peretti.

Who were Garinei and Giovannini?

Pietro Garinei, 1919-2006, and Sandro Giovannini, 1915-1977, authors and directors who met in the newsrooms of sports papers and invented Italian musical comedy. They took over Teatro Sistina in 1960. They signed 49 theatrical works and 85 tours in more than 20 countries.

What are the most famous shows born at Teatro Sistina?

Rugantino, debuted on December 15, 1962. Il giorno della tartaruga, on October 26, 1964. Ciao Rudy, on January 7, 1966. Alleluja brava gente, on December 24, 1970. Aggiungi un posto a tavola, on December 8, 1974.

Did Rugantino really go to Broadway?

Yes. In February 1964, at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York, where for three weeks the box office recorded sold-out houses.

Who runs Teatro Sistina today?

Massimo Romeo Piparo, artistic director since July 2013. Before him the leadership had been Gianmario Longoni's, together with Enzo Garinei between 2006 and 2009 and then alone until 2013.

Why is Teatro Sistina called the theater of the Romans?

For the affection of an audience that has filled the hall for decades and that considers the repertoire born here a part of its own city identity. The other recurring label is the Scala of Italian musical comedy.

Does Teatro Sistina have an official recognition?

From March 2003 to 2015 it was recognized by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities as the Resident Theater of Italian Musical Comedy. In 2008 it won two AGIS Golden Tickets.

What is the difference between Teatro Sistina and Teatro dell'Opera?

Teatro dell'Opera is the hall for melodrama and ballet, with a resident orchestra and chorus. The Sistina is the theater of musical comedy and the musical, with long runs and its own production.

Can you visit Teatro Sistina outside of shows?

The Sistina is a working hall, not a museum: access is tied to the performances and to any initiatives organized by the theater. Information on visits or special openings should be requested directly from the theater.

What can you see near Teatro Sistina?

Within a 10-minute walk there are Piazza Barberini with Bernini's Triton Fountain of 1642-1643, Via Veneto, Palazzo Barberini with the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Trinità dei Monti and Piazza di Spagna, the Trevi Fountain, Piazza Colonna and Via del Corso.

Where to park near Teatro Sistina?

In the paid garages around Piazza Barberini and Via Veneto, keeping in mind the traffic restrictions of the Historic Center. For an evening at the theater the metro remains the most convenient solution.

Does Teatro Sistina appear in any films?

Yes. The finale of Totò cerca moglie, from 1950, directed by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, is set in the then newly built Palazzo Sistina, with the protagonists entering the hall and watching their own epilogue on the screen.

The final advice on Teatro Sistina

Too many visitors walk out of the Colosseum with the face of someone who has ticked a box. At the Sistina the opposite happens: you go in with no expectations and come out singing. If you have a free evening in the city and you face the choice between another lit-up monument and a seat on Via Sistina, take the seat. Rome is also understood by the way it laughs at itself, and that way, from 1960 on, was written in here.

The only caveat is the usual practical one: choose the date before everything else, aim for the center of the orchestra section or of the first balcony, arrive 20 minutes early. And if on the bill you find a revival of Rugantino or Aggiungi un posto a tavola, don't think twice: they are the two titles that taught half the world what Italian musical comedy is, and you'll see them in the hall they were written for.

For those building a broader Roman itinerary, the 30 things to do in Rome collected by ItalyPlanner and the three-day itinerary from the same editorial team, available on the page Rome in 3 days, help fit the daytime monuments together with evenings at the theater. If you travel in a group or are looking for professional assistance on site, you'll find the dedicated options in the custom experiences for small groups from TourLeaderPro.

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.