The Maritime Theater was a
miniature villa inside Villa Adriana, the exclusive private retreat of Emperor Hadrian. It has a circular central island surrounded by a circular canal that functioned like a medieval moat.
On the island there was an atrium, a central garden onto which a triclinium opened, flanked by two small rooms. On the east side were two cubicles with single latrines.
A
miniature thermal plant was built on the western side, equipped with a basin for cold water, with
few steps linkig it to the outer circular canal. And then there was a heated room with suspensurae.
Today the central island of the Maritime Theater is accessed with a
modern masonry bridge, but in ancient times there were
two revolving wooden bridges that allowed the emperor to isolate himself completely, as seen
in the plastic model.The traces of the tracks for the revolving bridges and of the white marble revetment of the canal were already photographed by Pierre Gusman at the beginning of the twentieth century, and he wrote "lower part of the water basin ot the Natatorium", which at that time was the name of the Theater.
The current restoration works (November 2023) have emptied the canal, showing those traces again. They will soon be hidden by modern waterproofing, which has already covered the remains of the ancient stair of the bath.