Epidavros is the only surviving acoustically perfect theater in Greece and was completed around 330-320BC. This famous ancient theater, part of an ancient healing complex or spa, today stages performances of Classical Greek Theatrical plays on Friday and Saturday nights from the end of June through the last weekend in August.
Extremely popular with Greeks and foreigners alike and mostly preformed in the ancient Greek language, the annual Athens Festival, often features the works of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. Many other types of events from the musical to the theatric are also featured for the enjoyment of a wide variety of spectator. The Greeks invented Theater after all, and attending a performance here is not something you are likely to ever forget. Pillows are provided but thin but the white marble offers a welcoming cool to the touch.
The Epidauros complex was, in its day, an extrmemely important medical sanctuary to the ancient Greek world and dedicated to Asklepios, the god of healing who superseded the earlier sanctuary of Apollo by the 4th century BC.
The Asklepion cult probably originated in Homeric times in Thessaly (from Trikke) from which it migrated southward, but it first attained prominence at Epidauros during the 6-5th centuries BC., spreading from there to Athens (where there is are ruins of an Asklepion sanctuary on the south slope below the Acropolis). The sanctuary at Epidauros, along with that on the island of Kos (where Hippocrates practiced medicine), were the two most famous.
According to legend Asklipios was the son of Apollo and Koronis, a Boetian princess and was suckled by a female goat and educated by a wise centaur (Cheiron) who taught him surgery and healing with plants. As a result, the student became so gifted as to resurrect the dead, earning him the enmity of Hades and Zeus, who considered such powers the province of gods alone, his punishment: death by one of Zeus' thunderbolts, after which he was buried at Epidaurus.
The cult of Asklipios reached its peak during the 4th century BC and most all of the great Greek doctors (including Hippocrates) claimed him as mentor. He is depicted as a bearded figure leaning on a divining wand and accompanied by a magic serpent-hence the caduceus- sacred symbol of medecine.