Teatro Massimo

The story

The design was by Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, who won the competition and saw work begin in 1875 but not end: he died in 1891 and his son Ernesto completed the building. The theatre opened in 1897 with Verdi’s Falstaff. It is the largest opera house in Italy and one of the largest in Europe.

The style is a severe neoclassicism, with the staircase, the portico of Corinthian columns and the great dome that commands Piazza Verdi. It closed in 1974 for works meant to be brief that lasted twenty-three years; it reopened in 1997.

Coppola shot the final sequence of The Godfather Part III on its steps.

Why it is worth it

From the square it is already a presence: the staircase, the bronze lions, the dome. But it is inside that you grasp the scale: the horseshoe auditorium with five tiers of boxes, the ceiling of painted panels that open to let the air circulate, the Sala Pompeiana with its echo at the centre. If you can catch a performance, better still.