The theater of Dodona is among the most impressive buildings in the whole of Greece. It has 56 or 57 rows of seats that (for the most part) nest on the hillside, whose rock has been carefully carved to receive the stone seats. But the theater is so big that its ends had to be secured in place with the erection of two massive retaining walls strengthened with towers that seem able to defy the elements forever. Two diazomata (corridors) divide the auditorium in three horizontal zones, while ten staircases in the theater (and two exterior ones on the east and west side) allowed more than 17,000 people to move about their seats. The skene has two storeys: the actors made their appearance on the roof of the proskenion (the stoa in front of the skene) and paintings adorned the empty spaces between the doors used by the actors to come and go.