Sound attenuation of periodically arranged cylindrical rods is studied numerically and experimentally. Cross section of the cylinder is circular and arrays are in a square lattice. Cylinders are made of steel, and consist of five groups with different diameters from 27.2 mm to 48 mm. Each group has 5 rows, while number of cylinders in a row varies from 17 to 31. The area filling fraction is about 60~61 %, which leads to the stop bandgap(2.9 kHz ~ 8.4 kHz). Sound attenuation is computed using two-dimensional BEM, and measurement is done by using a speaker and microphones in a semi-anechoic room. Comparison of the results by BEM and experiment shows that attenuation spectra are qualitatively in agreement, although experiment gives higher attenuations than BEM. After results by BEM are scaled up in accordance with cylinder diameter, it is observed that attenuation curves are in good agreement, which confirms that analysis by BEM is done correctly. It is also found that the measured bandgaps are shifted toward lower frequency by 0.5 kHz ~ 1.2 kHz, when compared to the predictions obtained from infinitely repeated two-dimensional cylinder arrays.