About
The Festival di Caracalla 2026 invites you to experience Rome in a new and extraordinary way — where ancient history and living art converge under the open sky. For this special season, the festival leaves its traditional home due to ongoing restoration of the historic Baths of Caracalla and moves to the monumental Circus Maximus — one of the most iconic and atmospheric spaces of the Eternal City, transformed into a vast open-air stage of breathtaking scale.
From June 29 to July 31, 2026, this legendary festival unfolds in a setting once used for ancient spectacles, now reborn as a temple of music capable of welcoming thousands of spectators each evening.
Here, opera, symphonic music, and contemporary performances merge into a powerful artistic dialogue between past and present.
At the heart of the program lies a compelling operatic and musical selection, where tradition meets innovation. The festival presents grand operatic productions rooted in the Italian repertoire, alongside visually striking large-scale shows that expand the language of opera into a cinematic dimension.
A major highlight of the season is Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, performed as a monumental open-air spectacle, where orchestra, chorus, and visual design merge into an immersive sonic landscape — a true celebration of rhythm, power, and collective emotion.
The festival’s concert program broadens its artistic horizon, blending classical mastery with contemporary voices. Alongside symphonic performances by the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, audiences will encounter crossover events featuring internationally renowned artists such as Patti Smith, Riccardo Cocciante, and Edoardo Bennato — creating a vibrant, genre-crossing atmosphere that redefines the traditional summer festival.
The artistic direction of the 2026 season is shaped by leading figures of the Italian opera scene. Under the guidance of artistic director Alessandro Galoppini and music director Michele Mariotti, the festival achieves a refined balance between heritage and contemporary vision, supported by the excellence of chorus master Ciro Visco and a distinguished creative team.
What makes the Festival di Caracalla 2026 truly unique is its atmosphere — an encounter between the grandeur of ancient Rome and the emotional immediacy of live performance. As night falls over the Circus Maximus, music fills the vast space with a sense of timeless beauty, turning each evening into a shared, unforgettable experience.
The Festival di Caracalla 2026 is not just a cultural event — it is an invitation to witness Rome itself transformed into a stage, where history, music, and imagination come together in perfect harmony.
About the Festival Di Caracalla
There’s no better way to spend a balmy summer night in Rome than enjoying an opera, ballet or concert at the Baths of Caracalla. A cultural hub and vibrant social spot back in Ancient Rome, the Baths were the equivalent of a community day spa, where Romans would go to bathe and socialize. It was a place to entertain and to be entertained. Fast-forward thousands of years later, and the ruins have become an open-air, improvised stage that welcomes thousands of locals and tourists every summer.
The music festival Caracalla Festival takes place in June-August in the famous Roman baths of Caracalla. The second largest public baths, built in the early 3rd century by order of the Roman emperor Antonino Caracalla, are now the most important archaeological site in Italy. In addition, it is one of the largest open-air theaters in Europe, where since 1937 the Music Festival at the Baths of Caracalla (Caracalla Festival) has been held.
The majestic ruins of the Baths of Caracalla have become a natural backdrop for such great operas as Aida, Carmen, Tosca, Nabucco, Turandot. The spacious stage with a hall for 20,000 seats turned into the main theater stage of the Roman summer. Over the years, the voices of Maria Callas and Beniamino Gigli sounded here, the first performance of three legendary tenors took place: Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti. In 1993, theatrical performances were stopped for some time due to restoration work, but already at the beginning of the new millennium, the performances of the summer musical seasons resumed, again attracting the world's best performers to the festival.
The basis of the festival program in the Baths of Caracalla is the performances of the Rome Opera (Teatro dell'Opera di Roma).
