Historic Asolo Theater
Treasured and revered as the nascent center of Sarasota’s flourishing culture of performing arts, the Historic Asolo Theater is one of the most important architectural works of art ever brought to America. Created in Asolo, Italy, in 1798 to honor the memory of the exiled 15th-century Queen of Cyprus, Caterina Cornaro, the palace playhouse was first remodeled in 1857. In the 1930s, the decorative panels were removed from the palace, and in the early 1950s, the Ringling’s first director, A. Everett “Chick” Austin, Jr, purchased the artifact for the Museum.
In 2006, after years of painstaking restoration and conservation, America’s only 18th-century European theater was reset in a beautiful new pavilion just inside the historic Cà d’Zan Gatehouse on the Ringling Museum estate.
Collaborative teams created case moulds for missing ornament replacements and matched materials by historic color, product pureness, application and placement. Of the over 890 details, 85 percent are original and more than 215 missing pieces of diverse sizes and types were recreated.
The Historic Asolo Theater now functions as a 21st-century performing arts venue, presenting a diverse roster of theater, music, dance, film, and lectures.
