The rotta (also rotte, chrotta or hrotta) is a type of lyre that was widely used in north-western Europe from pre-Christian to medieval times.

Kathleen Schlessinger published a theory in the 1911 Encumbered Encyclopedia Britannica which suggests that the modern acoustic guitar could have arisen from the rotte, in changes observed in iconography.

[2] The rotta possessed, in common with all other forerunners of the violin, the chief structural features of the cithara: the box sound chest composed of back and belly either flat or delicately arched connected by ribs.

The rotta represents the first step in the evolution of the cithara, when arms and cross-bar were replaced by a frame joined to the body, the strings being usually restricted to eight or fewer.

The first (and perhaps also the last) transition was accomplished in Christian Asia, where, however, the upper frame of the earliest rotta seems to have been at once discarded in favour of a long neck with frets, for which the tanbur undoubtedly supplied the idea.