The Roman city of Trimuncium

The Roman city of Trimuncium /witch is the roman name for today's Plovdiv, situated in Bulgaria/ was one of the big cities in this part of the Roman Empire whit a population of 60 000 people. Lucky for us we have a lot of things left from that time.

Ancient Theatre


It was build in the end of the 1/begining of the 2 century by Ulpii Traian on top of the temple of Bendida. It has 28 roads, the first 14 of witch are perfectly preserved even whit the numbers of the sections /"filii"/. It was active until the 5th century and restored in 191981. Right now this is the best open-air stage in Bulgaria, because of it's acustics.

The Romans had rules, when building theatres - they had to hold 1/10 part of the population of the city, once it could hold up to 6 000 people, right now -/+ 4 000.

The easiest way to tell the diference between a Roman amfitheatre and a Greek one, whit out knowing anything is when you look the difference between the stage and the first roll of seats. If it has a one meter distance - then it's a Roman one, because of the fights whit animals /so the audiance would be save/, and if the seats start from the bottom - then it's a greek one , beause they didn't have fights whit animals.

Also from here comes on of the theories for the name "Philipopolis", one is that it's named after Philip the 2nd and the other one is that the name comes from the word "filii", witch as I said means seactions, and Philipopolis translates in to "the city of many sections", as it really was.



The Roman Odeon


Again build in the end of the 1st/the begining of the 2nd century, once it had 4 walls and a roof on top and was used as the city concul. Later in the 3rd century it was turned into a mini apfitheatre. We still use it to host small concerts. Once it used to host around 500 people, but now it only hosts about 350 people. It was restored in 2004 whit some financial help from the Greek fonadation "Levetis".


Roman Stadium
Once used to look like this


Until about 3 mounts ago you could only see this


The whole stadium is preserved, but we can't uncover it, because we have biuldings from the 18-20th century on top /and this is our central predstrian street/, but from about 3-4 months we are restoring it /at least a part from it/, so in April it should be opened.
It was one of the last things that were uncovered, until the early 1970's buses used to go on top of this.
Build in the 1st/2nd century - one of the 12 build by the Delfinian model in the world. The rules for building a stadium stated that it had to host half of the population of the city, in this case 30 000. On it there have been the Alkesandrian and the Kendrizian games /also everything close to the olympic games/. The olympic flame rested here in 1980.


I will have to continue tomorrow, because I can;t find pictures on the web, so I'll have to go and take some pictures tomorrow.