Odeon of Amman
Philadelphia (Amman), Jordan
2nd century CE
500 seats
Odeon ("singing place") is the name for several ancient Greek and Roman buildings built for music: singing exercises, musical shows, poetry competitions, and the like. Archaeologists have speculated that the Odeon of Amman was most likely closed by a temporary wooden roof that shielded the audience from the weather.
This Odeum is a Roman one, built in the 2nd century CE, at the same time as the Roman Theatre next to it.
Sources and more text below.
“The small theatre, or odeum, faces west upon the open space in front of the great theatre. Its southwest angle is about 5 m. east, and 14 m. north of the northeast angle of the theatre. It was built up entirely from the ground level and consisted of an outer west wall with five entrances in it, an inner wall, or proscenium, connected with the outer wall by a tunnel vault, two massive towers which formed the parascenia, and a small cavea divided by a single praecinctio. Of these parts, the first, or western wall, with three of its portals is standing to the height of one story; the doorways on the ends have fallen with the collapse of the angles, leaving one jamb of each with the springers of the relieving arches above them; the inner wall is partly preserved, and portions of the vaulting of the passage between the two walls are still in place; the southern tower is intact in two stories, and its west wall rises to a height of about 15 meters, but the opposite tower is a heap of ruins. The exterior curve of the cavea may still be traced at certain points; but the interior is filled with a mass of debris caused by the collapse of the northern tower and the high wall of the scaena, both of which fell inward. The ruin must have long served as a quarry; for almost all the seats that are not buried in debris have been removed. It was possible for me to find only short sections of four seats, at the extreme end on the south, and here I was also able to secure the measurements of the praecintio. It is plain that this building, though badly ruined, in 1881, when Captain Conder gathered the materials for his plan1 of the odeum, was not in the demolished condition in which we found it twenty-three years later·, for there are details in his description that are not to be found today. Captain Conder published only a plan on a very small scale without any details in the cavea; but his description gives a number of accurate measurements. With these as a check I am able to present the accompanying plan (Ill. 34), for which I cannot lay claim to accuracy in details, and a cross-section which is based largely upon conjecture. Plan. It is not possible, from the minuteness of its scale, to ascertain the precise measurements of Captain Conder’s plan of the odeum, where they are not definitely mentioned in the text; but so far as they are obtainable with the aid of the scale of feet given, they are substantially the same as those which I took. The whole structure, from the front wall to the exterior curve of the cavea, measures 35 m., or, according to Captain Conder’s plan, a little over 100 feet; the extreme width of the cavea is 40 in.; in Conder’s plan, about 125 feet; the stage building, at the middle, through both walls and the vaulted passage measures 7.48 m., in the other plan 25 feet. The old plan gives but three portals in the west wall, and makes this wall shorter than the width of the cavea; Captain Conder apparently did not observe that this wall terminates at either end in a door-jamb with the springers of a relieving arch over it; one of these jambs is shown in the photograph3 published by Captain Conder, the other may be seen in Ill. 35. These doors were of the same dimensions as the others, and, when they are restored, the length of the west wall will be equal to the width of the cavea. Captain Conder shows towers projecting inward at either end of the scaena wall; he states in the text that one of these towers measures 11 feet east and west, and 25 feet north and south. By this he must have meant that the north side adjoining the scaena wall measures 11 feet, and that the east wall was 25 feet long outside; for the south wall of the tower, now standing, is nearly 5 m. long. The earlier plan moreover places the centre of the semicircles of the cavea upon a line connecting the angles of these towers; but such a centre will not give a radius long enough to touch the rear curve of the cavea, which we agree is 35 m. from the west wall, without increasing the width of the cavea which we know to be 40 m. The measurement from the wall of the praecinctio at one end, to the corresponding point opposite is 24.15 m. In my plan I have therefore moved the centre backward 4 m. and I have constructed the semicircles of the cavea within the prescribed dimensions. This arrangement gives a space 4 meters wide for the paradoi. Down under the debris on the north side I measured a vault 4 meters wide, east and west, and a series of carved voussoirs of an arch that must have had a span of at least 3.70 m. I believe that the vault was the vault of the parados and that the arch-stones belonged to the arch which opened from it toward the orchestra. Captain Conder found seven rows of seats above the praecinctio; there could never have been more, if there were any passage at the top of the cavea: I found only four rows of seats, and no remains of seats below the praecinctio have ever been reported. Captain Conder describes three vomitoria from the cavea, one in the middle of the curve and one on either side. Only the barest remains of these are now visible. It is evident that these led from the praecinctio down to the level of the ground outside. The side of one such opening in the wall of the praecinctio is still to be seen on the south side at a distance of 5.75 m. from the tower wall. If the height of the praecinctio above the ground level be as I have indicated it, the steps of the vomitoria will descend from the praecinctio to the ground level at the outer curve of the cavea wall, at the same angle as the steps of the scalae within. These exits, of course, had vaults; these are likened, by Captain Conder, to segments of a hollow cone. Supers true hire. Satisfactory measurements of heights are out of the question in a ruin so filled with debris, unless the debris is removed; I have attempted to give a cross section, reconstructed in, what seems to me, the most logical method with the data in hand, and from what we know of the other buildings of a similar character. The ground level is, of course, unobtainable in a ruin of this character; but one may begin with the praecinctio, of which a small section is preserved, and place above it seven rows of seats with a narrow passage above them; parts of a scala are to be seen near the south end; the seats and the praecinctio terminate against the long wall of the tower. Of this much we may be reasonably certain; but the reconstruction of the cavea below the praecinctio depends entirely upon the existence of paradoi passing under the praecinctio and the upper section of seats at their extreme ends (Ill. 34). If there were paradoi at this point, a complete half circle of seats must be provided for within, i. e., east of, the paradoi, and the number of seats must be great enough to furnish height for the entrances on either side. I have assumed that the vault 4 m. wide is the vault of the parados, and that the voussoirs belonged to the arch of the entrance, and have therefore given a height to the lower section of the cavea, that will allow for ten rows of seats and a barrier about the orchestra 70 cm. in height. This arrangement provides for an orchestra 10.75 m. in diameter, and the semicircle of the orchestra, if continued to a circle would be tangent to the front line of a stage 2 m. deep. The standing portion of the south tower still towers above the rest of the ruin (Ill. 35), but in 1881, according to Captain Conder’s photograph, it was much higher, and was estimated by him to be 50 feet, about 17 m. high. This would give a scaena wall of at least that height. From indications in my photograph, as well as that published by Captain Conder, it is evident that there were large arched windows in the first story of the scaena wall above the vaulted passage at the rear of the stage: the jamb of the window and one voussoir are to be seen at the north side of the tower where a short section of the scaena wall is still in situ. It is very doubtful if the front wall of the odeum was carried up for an upper story; there is hardly enough debris to warrant it; yet this might have been carried away for building material; but the fact that the west wall of the tower, and the face of the section of the scaena wall still clinging to the tower, are both faced with draughted masonry, seems to show that they were exterior walls, although the rustication is carried to the base of the tower behind the vaulted passage of the postscenium. The outer wall is of finely dressed smooth ashlar, the portals were provided with arches of discharge above flat, three- piece lintels, the frame mouldings are of good but simple profile. On either side of the middle portal was a semicircular niche, and in the next spaces were rectangular niches with round arches. Beside each relieving- arch there were corbels in the wall which were more probably inserted to sustain the beams of a colonnade than to hold statues. The greater part of the ornamental details of the building has disappeared. The interior contains among its heaps of broken fragments several fine pieces of well wrought friezes and cornices which show that the scaena was richly adorned with entablat- ures. The mouldings of the seats were substantially like those of the great theatre (Ill. 34, detail), and have no resemblance to the detail given by Captain Conder, which must have been made from a broken example. “
(Text is told first hand by Howard Crosby Butler, who wrote the Syria series)
Sources: 1, 2
