Teatro dei Riuniti

“Dei Riuniti” Theater The Teatro dei Riuniti of Umbertide is located in the historical center of the town, in Piazza Fortebraccio, next to the Rocca. The Teatro dei Riuniti—together with the remake of the square, the construction of the clock tower, and the project for the realization of a bridge over the Royal Palace—was part of the urban renewal of the town during the first decade of the 19th century. The design for the realization of the theater, which foresaw three orders of boxes, 13 each, an audience hall and a spacious stage—dressing rooms included—was commissioned in 1805 to Giovanni Cerrini, architect formed at the Accademia Perugina. Between 1810 and 1812 the fresco paintings—brought to light recently—were executed by the Perugian painter Giovanni Monotti and Faina. There are two stripes of decorations along the second and third order of boxes, with the portraits of illustrious playwrights and authors of drama, framed by laurel and alternated with swans and panoplies in the first order, and by lyres, crowns, trumpets and oak leaves in the second order. The theater, restructured several times, underwent an enlargement of the stalls area in 1959-1960 that penalized the stage area. Although the decoration of the theater of Umbertide is fragmented and partly repainted, it is the sole—among the ones in Umbria—to have survived the post-Unitarian remake. This fact confers to the theater a higher value, being a rare evidence of what the interior design of Neoclassical taste was like. In 1985 the Umbertide Municipality decided to restore the Teatro dei Riuniti, by taking the 19th century design as a reference and adding some functional decorative elements to be commissioned to contemporary artists and designers. The theater was given back completely restored to the townspeople of Umbertide in 1990, and has become an important point of cultural referral of the town and a natural seat for the homonym theatric company, born in 1985.