Teatro della Pergola
Florence's historic playhouse of 1657, now the main stage of the Fondazione Teatro della Toscana.
The Pergola was built for the Accademia degli Immobili, a company of Florentine noblemen, to designs by Ferdinando Tacca, and opened in 1657. It is usually described as the first theatre in Italy laid out with tiers of separate boxes rising above a horseshoe stalls, an arrangement copied across Europe. Originally a private court theatre reached through a courtyard, it was opened to a paying public in 1718 and given its present neoclassical front and interior by Bartolomeo Silvestri in the 1850s.
Its stage saw the premieres of Verdi's Macbeth in 1847 and, later, work by Pirandello and Eleonora Duse; Antonio Meucci, a stage technician here, is credited with early experiments in telephony in the building. The theatre is now the principal house of the Fondazione Teatro della Toscana, which also runs the Nuovo Rifredi in Florence and the Teatro Era at Pontedera. The season runs from autumn to spring and mixes classic Italian repertoire with new writing, dance and the smaller Saloncino auditorium upstairs.
Highlights
- Horseshoe auditorium with four tiers of boxes, a model for later opera houses
- Site of the first performance of Verdi's Macbeth in 1847
- The Saloncino, a smaller hall used for chamber work and talks
- Guided tours taking in the foyer, auditorium and backstage machinery
