It is an impressive building erected in the early 1st century AD, together with other public buildings in the city.
It operated mainly during the religious celebration of the Nea Aktia, in honor of Apollo.
Lists of winners in the Nea Aktia contests found in the temple of Apollo inform of competing poets, sophists, comedians, heralds, trumpeters, guitarists, announcers, pipers and mimes.
The theater was built on the slope of a hill and in an effort to increase protection from earthquakes, a high buttressed wall was built around the cavea.
A wide corridor called diazoma divided the cavea into two sections, the theater and the epitheatro. At the corridor’s edges were two large vaulted entrances.
The cave supported a peripheral portico probably sheltering spectators in case of a sudden storm.
Both the orchestra and the cavea were shaped as a regular semicircle.
There was a high, probably two-storey, scene (characteristic of the Roman architecture) with three arched entrances at the facade.
