Built between 1767 and 1769, the theater was designed by Antonio Galli Bibiena on commission of the rector of the Accademia dei Timidi, Count Carlo Ottavio di Colloredo, with the purpose of hosting mainly scientific meetings, but also open to recitals and concerts. The theatre, no longer with steps and a fixed scene like those of the Renaissance, has a bell-shaped plan and is arranged on several orders of wooden boxes, according to the type of structure invented in the seventeenth century and which by now reigned. The theater was inaugurated on December 3, 1769: it turned out to be one of the most significant architectural formulations of the late European eighteenth century. Just over a month after the inauguration, on January 16, 1770 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, just fourteen years old, arrived in Mantua during his first Italian tour, consecrated the incipient life of the "scientific" theater by holding a memorable concert there, together with his father Leopold.