Teatro Rossini, Opera house in Lugo, Italy

Teatro Rossini is the city theatre of Lugo, in Emilia-Romagna, and the oldest surviving municipal theatre in the region. Its horseshoe-shaped auditorium has a stalls floor, four tiers of boxes and a gallery, with the foyer on the upper floor. The proscenium opening is 9.20 m wide and the hall reaches 12.50 m from the centre of the stalls to the skylight.

In September 1757 Lugo's community council resolved to build a theatre; work began in July 1758 under Francesco Ambrogio Petrocchi, and Antonio Galli Bibiena completed it and painted the interior himself. It opened in August 1761 with Metastasio's Catone in Utica. In 1859 it was named after Rossini, who had studied music in Lugo from age 10 to 13.

Named after Rossini in 1859 while he was still alive, the theatre had staged his Tancredi in 1814, L'italiana in Algeri in 1815 and La gazza ladra in 1818. In 1806, as a teenager, Rossini himself played harpsichord here in La nobiltà delusa, with his father Giuseppe on hunting horn. The house hosts the Lugo Opera Festival and works as a producing theatre specialised in opera.

The theater sits in the center of Lugo and is straightforward to find on foot. Those planning to sit in the upper tiers should be prepared for steeper stairs, while the lower sections are easier to reach.

Restoration work uncovered original stucco decorations from the 18th century that had been hidden beneath later layers of renovation. The same work also brought to light paintings from 1819 that had been covered over for many years.