Teatro degli Illuminati

“Degli Illuminati” Theater The Accademia Letteraria degli Illuminati of Città di Castello, devoted to St Illuminato, built its first theater—all in wood—in 1666, which was torn-down after a hundred years of activity. In 1783, following a memorial presented by the townspeople to the Sacra Consulta of Rome—a Papal State governmental body—the Academics decided to rebuild it in brickwork. Once the work was executed—whose cost was 885 Italian scudi—the new theater, the Teatro degli Illuminati, was reopened to the public in 1796 with a prose play and balls as intermezzos. In 1861, the theater was restored and embellished with stuccowork and gildings by the painter Giuseppe Bianchi, from Florence, who was also the author of the stage curtain. The Perugian Vincenzo Baldini painted the sceneries, and the theater reopened to the public in 1862 with the Opera Lucrezia Borgia of Donizzetti and the Traviata of Verdi. Having been restored several times, today the Teatro degli Illuminati is an elegant and resounding theater, with its four orders of boxes –17 for each tier—and a loggia created in 1887 together with the audience hall ceiling painting, the work of the Perugian Ulisse Ribustini.