The theater was built at the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 2nd century ВС, in the period of the late Hellenism, and was intended for displaying dramatic, musical and poetry performances by the lovers of theatrical art. Some of the city wealthy people had bought and own seats in the theater, such as Crisp and Topos as great fans of theatrical art because their names still stand engraved in the stone blocks of the seats. Immediately after the Roman conquests of this in 148 BC, the theater was rearranged in a theater with an arena of gladiatorial struggles and wild beast fights, with...

The theater was built at the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 2nd century ВС, in the period of the late Hellenism, and was intended for displaying dramatic, musical and poetry performances by the lovers of theatrical art. Some of the city wealthy people had bought and own seats in the theater, such as Crisp and Topos as great fans of theatrical art because their names still stand engraved in the stone blocks of the seats. Immediately after the Roman conquests of this in 148 BC, the theater was rearranged in a theater with an arena of gladiatorial struggles and wild beast fights, with several of the lower row seats being demolished and several cages for animals were built, and the orchestra with honorary seats was enclosed with a firewall. Later its outer zone was built, which increased the capacity of the theater to 5,000 spectators. It is thought that the theater was destroyed together with all other pagan objects in the city at the beginning of the 4th century when St. Erasmus Antiochus, the first Christian missionary who came to Ohrid, converted 25,000 people to Christianity. The materials from theater’s seats and other objects were later used to build early Christian basilicas and many other sacred and profane objects. The first assumptions that there was a theater in the ancient Lychnidus (today's Ohrid ) was given by the Russian art historian Nikodim Kondakov at the very beginning of the 20th century, and already during 1935 , when the first archaeological excavations were carried out, these assumptions were confirmed and the theater was partially discovered. Later, during the excavations carried out in the period 1959-1960, the exact location and the size of the theater were determined. With systematic excavations, started in 1977 and after a six-year interruption in 1984, the places where the entrances and the theater building, the orchestra with the honorable seats and the stretch of the arena are located, and nine rows of seats were discovered. In 1999, the project for the complete discovery and putting into operation began, and since 2001 drama performances, musical performances and various other manifestations are held here.