Is This Gdansk I See Before Me?

Shakespeare may have been dead for nearly 400 years but temples of Shakespeare worship are still being built in Europe.

In the past month an Italian version of London's Globe theatre has sprung up in the Villa Borghese park in the heart of Rome.

The 2m euro (£1.4m) theatre, built in oak, is due to open in October with a production of Romeo and Juliet.

"The one thing missing in the Villa Borghese was a theatre," the city's mayor, Walter Vetroni, told La Repubblica.

"We have tried to make it as Roman as possible," said Giuseppe Bigiano, in charge of construction. The building, described by La Repubblica as "like a giant [piece of] Leggo", will be open air and has been erected without foundations.

In Poland, efforts are underway to reconstruct a Shakespearean theatre that thrived in the Baltic port city of Gdansk almost 400 years ago, but has since been replaced by a carpark.

Travelling English actors first took Shakespeare's plays to the city in the early 17th century, when the city had a thriving British merchant community. An unknown benefactor had a wooden, open-air theatre modelled on the Fortune playhouse, another London theatre from the same era as the Globe, built in 1610.

The original theatre lasted into the 19th century before its wooden beams rotted through. A brick theatre, built after the original building became too dilapidated, was destroyed when much of Gdansk was reduced to rubble during the second world war. Later, under Communist rule, the Shakespeare theatre site became the unofficial car park for the local office of the country's secret police.

The new Gdansk theatre - a square, wooden-beamed building - will cost £4m to construct and its patron, the Prince of Wales, has been helping to raise interest in the project.

Since Poland emerged from the cold war, lifelong fans of the bard - Scecspir as he is known to Poles - have been dreaming that "open minded politicians and open handed capitalists" might provide the millions needed to rebuild the theatre and "put Poland back on the European cultural map".

In fact, the European Union, opening its arms to Poland along with nine other new members next year, may foot much of the bill.

"We are counting on EU funding for about 70% of the building," said Jerzy Limon, director of the Gdansk Shakespeare Foundation. "We hope it will be open by 2005."

International sponsors and fund-raising events have already helped raise around £0.5m for the project.

The theatre was built by an unknown benefactor in Gdansk, one of the largest and richest ports in the region and home to a thriving English and Scottish merchant community in the 17th century.

The new theatre will hold 600 spectators and look much like the original, with wooden beams, a pit for standing spectators and the same bright colours as were used in Elizabethan times.

But the Baltic model - in a country where winter temperatures can sometimes fall to -20C (-4F) - will also have fire sprinklers, air conditioning and a glass roof, to keep out the rain and the noise of traffic.

"The plan is for the theatre to stay open all year round," said Limon. "And perhaps when Globe theatre performances close at the end of the London summer season, they can move on to Gdansk for the winter."

Around the world, some 20 Globe-type theatres have been built in honour of the Bard, most in the United States. Poles are avid Scecspir fans and 78 different translations of Hamlet can be found on their bookshelves.