Roman Philippopolis: How a Provincial Capital Worked

At the centre of Dzhumaya Square, several rows of marble seats descend below the level of the modern street. They form the northern curve of the Ancient Stadium. The rest of the structure continues south beneath Main Street—a hidden body almost a quarter of a kilometre long under one of Plovdiv's busiest pedestrian routes.

This meeting of street and arena is the shortest entrance into the Roman city. Philippopolis was not a collection of three separate ruins. Forum, theatre and stadium formed a connected system: one organized government and commerce, another public performance, and the third mass spectacle. Together they reveal how a provincial capital gathered people and assigned them places.

In 46 AD, under Emperor Claudius, the city was incorporated into the Roman Empire and became the capital of the province of Thracia. Its Roman name, Trimontium—“the three hills”—kept the terrain inside the city's identity. The old fortified centre remained above, while the public city expanded across the lower ground beside the hills.

A capital required places where decisions could be announced, goods exchanged and large groups of residents assembled. Over the following generations that order became stone and marble. The city acquired not simply impressive buildings, but an architecture of shared life—squares, seating, passages and stages that made imperial authority visible in everyday routines.

In the first century, under Vespasian, the forum took shape within a new urban plan. Its rectangular square measured roughly 143 by 136 metres, with shops, porticoes and public buildings arranged around it. The Odeon, associated with the city council, stood in the north-eastern area; nearby were a library and a treasury recorded in inscriptions.

Here the different faces of Philippopolis met without a firm boundary between them. A purchase, an administrative matter, a religious ceremony and a political decision belonged to the same central landscape. The forum turned authority from a distant idea into a sequence of doors, columns and counters passed by citizens each day. Its remains are now visible near the Central Post Office and Gurko Street.

In the late first century, the theatre was built in the saddle between Dzhambaz and Taksim Tepe. A deciphered inscription points to the 90s, and its seating held about six thousand people. Twenty-eight rows of marble curved around the stage; names of city districts were carved into the benches, so the audience did not merely watch a performance—it also saw its own civic arrangement.

The stage brought entertainment and public representation together. Its architecture directed every gaze toward the performers while also displaying who sat where. That is why the theatre is more than an attractive ruin. Restored as an open-air venue, it now holds around 3,500 people—a smaller audience than in antiquity, but with the same outlook across the city toward the Rhodope Mountains.

In the early second century, under Hadrian, Philippopolis built a stadium roughly 240–250 metres long and nearly 50 metres wide. Fourteen tiers of stone seating could accommodate close to 30,000 spectators. Unlike many comparable structures, it stood inside the fortified city—an enormous arena inserted into the body of the capital itself.

Athletic contests modelled on the Pythian Games were staged here. The city's mint commemorated the games on coins bearing emperors and athletes, turning a local spectacle into an image that travelled far beyond the stadium. The mass audience was part of the message: Philippopolis could organize, order and entertain tens of thousands at once.

By the end of the fourth century, much of the theatre had been destroyed and gradually buried. In the mid-fifth century, life around the forum fell silent as the lower quarters were abandoned and residents withdrew toward the acropolis. The marble public spaces did not vanish completely; they remained beneath later streets and buildings, close enough to shape the future centre.

Twentieth-century excavation photographs capture the reverse process. Archive images dated to 1968 show the theatre's rows and the stadium's curve returning to daylight; the forum was discovered during construction in 1971. Today a person can walk between all three sites. The Roman city is visible again, yet never detached from the modern one—it lies beneath it, stands among it and is used by it once more.