Il Teatro Francesco di Bartolo

The "Francesco di Bartolo" Theatre was built in 1842 and it was inaugurated in 1843, at the time when the artistic and literary movements of this small town, that was already very lively because of the flourishing of numerous movements linked to the folklore of Buti, consolidated.

The building of the theatre was due to the "Accademici Riuniti", an association constituted of the most renowned families of the town. Its purpose was to enrich the centre with a place where shows, ball parties, concerts and conferences. Its name was chosen to remember Francesco di Bartolo, a poet of the XV century who became an illustrious representative of the Italian literature because he was the first author to comment Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.
The theatre was planned with the academic style of the time. It has a horseshoe shaped structure with stalls, the stage and two stool rows. The latter are an actual showcase of the local aristocracy. Each noble family bought one of them, while the entrance to the population was severely forbidden. As it often happened for this kind of XIX-century buildings, the famous Scala di Milano was the point of reference for those who had conceived and carried out the Theatre Francesco di Bartolo.
Originally, the curtain that does not exist any more today was enriched with a painting by Annibale Mariannini that represented the heroine Paola da Buti while she is trampling on the Florentine flag in the attempt to free the town from the city of the lily. Also the Murano glass chandelier seems to have been lost. In effect, in the XX century, the theatre went through a phase of decline that culminated with its transformation into a picture house after the Second World War and with its closedown in 1971.
In 1987, it was restructured and opened to the public and it immediately became one of the main points of reference of the Italian Theatre. Besides housing a conventional season, this place also houses the popular theatre and the laboratories of research and experimentation of the alternative theatre. Moreover, the review dedicated to the "Maggio" is renovated every year as a homage to an ancient tradition of the town. "Maggio" means acting poetry while singing, an art that Buti preserved from the socio-cultural changes occurred in Pisa and in Italy.