Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus is the world’s most perfect in terms of aesthetics and acoustics

“The Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, a World Heritage Site and to this day the best-preserved theatre of antiquity, is the most perfect theatre in the world in terms of aesthetics and acoustics,” stated the University of Patras in its most recent study.

A team of six professors from the University of Patras conducted extensive research on the ancient theatre and concluded that “the measurements confirm the theatre’s excellent acoustics and speech intelligibility, for all the typical listener positions tested.”

The study showed that in whichever seat someone sits within the theatre, either at the very front or at the last seat at the top of the theatre hill, they will be able to clearly hear the actors speak – who of course, never use microphones or any kind of sound boost equipment during plays. The natural echo of one’s voice can be heard from one end of the theatre to the other, which has long attracted the admiration of scientists, and even more so due to the fact that the Theatre of Epidaurus was built almost 2,500 years ago – a time when knowledge and technology were much more limited.

A study by the Georgia Institute of Technology makes the observation that “the elusive factor that makes the ancient amphitheater an acoustic marvel, is not the slope, or the wind — it’s the seats that create a sophisticated acoustic filter”. The leader of the study, professor Nico Declercq, explained that the audience could hear the lower frequencies of an actor’s voice “simply because the human brain is capable of reconstructing the missing frequencies through a phenomenon called virtual pitch, which helps us appreciate the incomplete sound coming from small loudspeakers (in a laptop or a telephone), even though the low (bass) frequencies are not generated by a speaker.”

With regard to location, the vast majority of ancient theatres are built on the slope of a hill, so that the slope of the ground favors the amphitheater configuration of the space. The choice of location was a crucial element and, in addition to being aesthetically appealing, it allowed the viewer not only to admire the natural environment, but it was also meant to serve worship or therapeutic purposes.