Paphos councillor wants the Roman odeion upgraded to stage large drama productions

Agathi Savvidou, a Paphos municipal councillor, wants the Department of Antiquities, the Deputy Ministry of Culture and the municipality to meet and agree how to upgrade the Roman odeion of Kato Paphos. She has taken the matter to the state departments concerned and to the Cyprus Theatre Organisation, asking them to change the monument's present status.

She puts the problem down to the facilities, which in her view fall short of what large modern productions require; scheduling and availability, she said, are no obstacle. Local bodies say the odeion is drifting out of the town's cultural life; their protests peaked this summer, when Paphos was judged to be getting less than its share of the International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama and other international events. Savvidou called this especially regrettable, since the festival was started in Paphos on the initiative of the late Nikos Siafkalis. Any upgrade, she said, must fully respect the site's archaeological character.

She has also revived her proposal, put to the full council about a year ago in a debate on a garden theatre for Paphos, to build it in Dasoudi Park, near the town centre.

The odeion is a small semicircular theatre, 47.50 m across overall, built against the hillside immediately west of the agora of Roman Nea Paphos [1, p. 252]. Maier and Karageorghis date the group of agora, odeion and Asklepieion to the early 2nd century AD [1, p. 251]. Kyriakos Nicolaou excavated it for the Department between 1968 and 1978.