Teatro Bibiena

Built between 1767 and 1769, the theater was designed by Antonio Galli Bibiena from Parma on commission from the rector of the Accademia dei Timidi, Count Carlo Ottavio di Colloredo, with the aim of hosting mainly scientific meetings, but also open to performances and concerts.

The theater, no longer stepped like the Renaissance ones, has a bell-shaped plan and is arranged on several orders of wooden boxes, according to the kind of structure invented in the seventeenth century and which now reigned.
With prodigious vivacity equal to the resources of the inspiration, the architect Bibiena fulfilled in just two years the obligation he had contracted with the Timids in 1767: he conceived the special theater, directed the factory works and finally, with the skill of a painter as well as as an architect, he personally frescoed the interiors of the numerous boxes with monochrome figures, which are also a precious document of the artistic activity of the distinguished master. The classic facade was built by Giuseppe Piermarini from which the hall on the first floor of the theater takes its name.

The "scientific", fully finished, on December 3, 1769 could be officially inaugurated: it was an exquisite jewel for the balance between movement and elegance and one of the most significant architectural formulations of the late European eighteenth century. Just over a month after the inauguration, on January 16, 1770, the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, just fourteen years old, who arrived in Mantua during his first Italian tour, consecrated the incipient life of the "scientific" theater, keeping you, together with his father Leopold, a memorable concert.
The theater is still used to host high-level musical events, concerts and conferences.