The UIA-approved competition was launched by the Municipality of Larissa in Thessaly, Greece, to actively incorporate the ancient theatre into the city’s urban life. The aim was to develop a project to transform an ancient open-air theatre and its surroundings from the 3rd century BC into a landmark for modern city of Larissa.

The project, in which FREA participated with a team consisting of Fatih Yavuz, Ömer Emre Şavural, Bilal Uğur Liman, Güney Gürsu Tonkal, Muhammed Talha Yazıcı, Ceyda Tokcan, architecture students Kaan Özdemir and Ebru Evin and architectural historian Pelin Yoncacı Arslan, was deemed worthy of an award for ‘recognising the crucial city spaces to be clarified as the connected network in the future’.

The team participated with the project named ‘DROMOS’, which means ‘long passage, corridor’ used for underground passages in ancient times. The project, with the main aim to integrate the Ancient Theatre A’ into the contemporary city, attempts to make this unique monument an active part of contemporary life by matching the theatre and public spaces to emphasize the importance of heritage values in raising public awareness.

To achieve this, the open public spaces surrounding the theatre have been redefined and made accessible with a new cultural route, with the ancient theatre at centre and other cultural and archaeologic values and sites included on the route. It aimed to reveal the potential to landmark identity of the city for the city.