When a civilization ends, it does not leave behind a tombstone. Instead, it leaves stackings of stones (i.e. buildings.) We lose the remembrance of individual people, the things they said, did, and wrote, but we remember what they built because those things endure for much longer. The Ancient Greeks and Romans tell us about themselves through their Classical Architecture. We remember the Medieval period in Europe from its castles and Gothic Cathedrals. We remember the early 20th century from the Art Deco buildings it left behind. The style tells us something about their priorities, what they believed, what they knew, and what their hopes were. In a sense, the buildings a culture leaves behind are a kind of epitaph.
Let’s look through the structural epitaphs of our ancestors.
This incredible Victorian building is one of, if not the most famous concert halls in the United Kingdom. It was built during the reign of Queen Victoria and has hosted the world’s leading artists ever since.
The building itself is considered Victorian, as it was built during her reign, but more specifically it is “Italianate.”
The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture with picturesque aesthetics. The resulting style of architecture was essentially of its own time. “The backward look transforms its object,” Siegfried Giedion wrote of historicist architectural styles; “every spectator at every period—at every moment, indeed—inevitably transforms the past according to his own nature.”
The Italianate style was first developed in Britain in about 1802 by John Nash, with the construction of Cronkhill in Shropshire. This small country house is generally accepted to be the first Italianate villa in England, from which is derived the Italianate architecture of the late Regency and early Victorian eras. The Italianate style was further developed and popularised by the architect Sir Charles Barry in the 1830s. Barry’s Italianate style (occasionally termed “Barryesque”) drew heavily for its motifs on the buildings of the Italian Renaissance, though sometimes at odds with Nash’s semi-rustic Italianate villas.
The name of the concert hall comes from Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria. He died six years before the foundation stone was laid, and the building was named in his memory.
The building itself is beautiful and possesses an interesting history.
Since the hall’s opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world’s leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage. It is the venue for the BBC Proms concerts, which have been held there every summer since 1941. It is host to more than 390 shows in the main auditorium annually, including classical, rock and pop concerts, ballet, opera, film screenings with live orchestral accompaniment, sports, awards ceremonies, school and community events, and charity performances and banquets. A further 1000 events are held each year in the non-auditorium spaces. Over its 153-year history, the hall has hosted people from various fields, including meetings held by suffragettes, speeches from Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, and Albert Einstein, fights by Lennox Lewis, exhibition bouts by Muhammad Ali, and concerts from regular performers at the venue such as Eric Clapton and Shirley Bassey.
The hall was originally to have been called the Central Hall of Arts and Sciences, but the name was changed to the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences by Queen Victoria upon laying the hall’s foundation stone in 1867, in memory of her husband, Prince Albert, who had died six years earlier. It forms the practical part of a memorial to the Prince Consort; the decorative part is the Albert Memorial directly to the north in Kensington Gardens, now separated from the hall by Kensington Gore.
In 1851, the Great Exhibition, organised by Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, was held in Hyde Park, London. The Exhibition was a success and led Prince Albert to propose the creation of a group of permanent facilities for the public benefit, which came to be known as Albertopolis. The Exhibition’s Royal Commission bought Gore House, but it was slow to act, and in 1861 Prince Albert died without having seen his ideas come to fruition. However, a memorial was proposed for Hyde Park, with a Great Hall opposite.
The dome (designed by Rowland Mason Ordish) was made of wrought iron and glazed. There was a trial assembly of the dome’s iron framework in Manchester; then it was taken apart again and transported to London by horse and cart. When the time came for the supporting structure to be removed from the dome after reassembly in situ, only volunteers remained on site in case the structure collapsed. It did drop – but only by five-sixteenths of an inch (7.9 mm). The hall was scheduled to be completed by Christmas Day 1870, and the Queen visited a few weeks beforehand to inspect.
The Royal Albert Hall in London was officially opened on 29 March 1871 by Queen Victoria and her eldest son, the Prince of Wales, in honor of her late husband, Prince Albert.
The official opening ceremony of the hall was on 29 March 1871. This had originally been scheduled for 1 May, the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the Great Exhibition, but was brought forward at the request of Queen Victoria. A welcoming speech was given by Edward, the Prince of Wales because the Queen was too overcome to speak; “her only recorded comment on the Hall was that it reminded her of the British constitution“.
The composer, organist, and choir conductor William Carter founded and directed a choir specifically for the opening of Royal Albert Hall. In the concert that followed, the hall’s acoustic problems immediately became apparent. Engineers first tried to remove the strong echo by suspending a canvas awning below the dome. This helped and also sheltered concert-goers from the sun, but the problem was not solved: it used to be jokingly said the hall was “the only place where a British composer could be sure of hearing his work twice”.
In July 1871, French organist Camille Saint-Saëns performed Church Scene from Faust by Charles Gounod; The Orchestra described his performance as “an exceptional and distinguished performer … the effect was most marvellous.”
Initially lit by gas, the hall contained a special system by which thousands of gas jets were lit within ten seconds. Though it was demonstrated as early as 1873 in the hall, full electric lighting was not installed until 1888. During an early trial when a partial installation was made, one disgruntled patron wrote to The Times, declaring it to be “a very ghastly and unpleasant innovation”.
In May 1877, Richard Wagner himself conducted the first half of each of the eight concerts which made up the Grand Wagner Festival. After his turn with the baton, he handed it over to conductor Hans Richter and sat in a large armchair on the corner of the stage for the rest of each concert. Wagner’s wife Cosima, the daughter of Hungarian virtuoso pianist and composer Franz Liszt, was among the audience.
The Wine Society was founded at the hall on 4 August 1874, after large quantities of cask wine were found in the cellars. A series of lunches were held to publicise the wines, and General Henry Scott proposed a co-operative company to buy and sell wines.
1900s
Postcard of the Royal Albert Hall (c. 1903) with an inset of the Albert MemorialRoyal Albert Hall, viewed from the south looking north towards Hyde Park, 1986.
In 1926, British media proprietor but then dancer Lew Grade won the ‘Charleston Championship of the World’, where American actor and dancer Fred Astaire was one of the judges.
In 1933, German physicist Albert Einstein led the ‘Einstein Meeting’ at the hall for the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics, a British charity.
In 1936, the hall was the scene of a giant rally celebrating the British Empire on the occasion of the centenary of Joseph Chamberlain‘s birth. In October 1942, the hall suffered minor damage during World War II bombing, but in general was left mostly untouched as German pilots used the distinctive structure as a landmark.
In 1949, the canvas awning was removed and replaced with fluted aluminium panels below the glass roof, in a new attempt to cure the echo; but the acoustics were not properly tackled until 1969 when large fibreglass acoustic diffusing discs (commonly referred to as “mushrooms” or “flying saucers”) were installed below the ceiling. In 1968, the hall hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 which was broadcast on television live in colour for the first time, and from 1969 to 1988 the Miss World contest was staged in the venue.
From 1996 until 2004, the hall underwent a programme of renovation and development supported by a £20 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £20m from Arts Council England to enable it to meet the demands of the next century of events and performances. Thirty “discreet projects” were designed and supervised by the architecture and engineering firm BDP without disrupting events. These projects included improved ventilation to the auditorium, more bars and restaurants, improved seating, better technical facilities, and improved backstage areas. Internally, the Circle seating was rebuilt during June 1996 to provide more legroom, better access, and improved sightlines.
The largest project of the ongoing renovation and development was the building of a new south porch – door 12, accommodating a first-floor restaurant, new ground floor box office and subterranean loading bay. Although the exterior of the building was largely unchanged, the south steps leading down to Prince Consort Road were demolished to allow construction of underground vehicle access and a loading bay with accommodation for three HGVs carrying all the equipment brought by shows. The steps were then reconstructed around a new south porch, named The Meitar Foyer after a significant donation from Mr & Mrs Meitar. The porch was built on a similar scale and style to the three pre-existing porches at Door 3, 6 and 9: these works were undertaken by Taylor Woodrow Construction. On 4 June 2004, the project received the Europa Nostra Award for remarkable achievement.
The East (Door 3) and West (Door 9) porches were glazed and new bars opened along with ramps to improve disabled access. The Stalls were rebuilt in a four-week period in 2000 using steel supports allowing more space underneath for two new bars; 1,534 unique pivoting seats were laid – with an addition of 180 prime seats. The Choirs were rebuilt at the same time. The whole building was redecorated in a style that reinforces its Victorian identity. 43,000 sq ft (4,000 m2) of new carpets were laid in the rooms, stairs, and corridors – specially woven with a border that follows the oval curve of the building.
Between 2002 and 2004, there was a major rebuilding of the great organ (known as the Voice of Jupiter), built by “Father” Henry Willis in 1871 and rebuilt by Harrison & Harrison in 1924 and 1933. The rebuilding was performed by Mander Organs, and it is now the second-largest pipe organ in the British Isles with 9,997 pipes in 147 stops. The largest is the Grand Organ in Liverpool Cathedral which has 10,268 pipes.
2010s
The Royal Albert Hall as seen from Prince Consort RoadAcoustic diffusing discs (lit in purple/blue) hanging from the roof of the hall. The fluted aluminium panels are seen behind.
During the first half of 2011, changes were made to the backstage areas to relocate and increase the size of crew catering areas under the South Steps away from the stage and create additional dressing rooms nearer to the stage.
From January to May 2013, the Box Office area at Door 12 underwent further modernisation to include a new Café Bar on the ground floor, a new Box Office with shop counters and additional toilets. The design and construction were carried out by contractor 8Build. Upon opening it was renamed ‘The Zvi and Ofra Meitar Porch and Foyer.’ owing to a large donation from the couple.
In Autumn 2013, work began on replacing the Victorian steam heating system over three years and improving cooling across the building. This work followed the summer Proms season during which temperatures were unusually high. Further heatwaves led to a rebuild of the Rausing Circle level in 2021 with air-cooling ventilation installed, significantly decreasing heat there during hot weather.
In 2017, work began on a two-story 11,000-square-foot (1,000 m2) basement extension for use as backstage and archival space to the south-west quadrant of the building. The project is nicknamed the “Great Excavation”, in reference to the Great Exhibition of 1851. A new archive space opened in the extension on 12 October 2023.
In 2018, a Walk of Fame was unveiled at the hall, with the first eleven recipients of a star including the Suffragettes (who held meetings at the hall), Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein (both of whom delivered speeches here), Muhammad Ali (who had exhibition events at a venue he dubbed a ‘helluva hall’), and Eric Clapton (who has played the venue over 200 times), among others, who were viewed as “key players” in the building’s history.
2020s
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions meant the hall was closed on 17 March 2020 for the longest time since the Second World War. In December 2020, it reopened for three socially distanced performances but was then closed for a second period, finally reopening to full capacity on 19 July 2021.
The Triumph of Arts and SciencesFrieze on the Royal Albert Hall
The hall, a Grade I listed building, is an ellipse in plan, with its external major and minor axes of 272 and 236 feet (83 and 72 meters), and its internal minor and major axis of 185 and 219 feet (56 and 67 m). The great glass and wrought-iron dome roofing the hall is 135 ft (41 m) high. The hall was originally designed with a capacity for 8,000 people and has accommodated as many as 12,000 (although present-day safety restrictions mean the maximum permitted capacity is now 5,272 including standing in the Gallery).
Around the outside of the building is 800-foot–long terracotta mosaic frieze, depicting “The Triumph of Arts and Sciences”, in reference to the hall’s dedication. Proceeding counter-clockwise from the north side the sixteen subjects of the frieze are:
Various Countries of the World bringing in their Offerings to the Exhibition of 1851
Music
Sculpture
Painting
Princes, Art Patrons and Artists
Workers in Stone
Workers in Wood and Brick
Architecture
The Infancy of the Arts and Sciences
Agriculture
Horticulture and Land Surveying
Astronomy and Navigation
A Group of Philosophers, Sages and Students
Engineering
The Mechanical Powers
Pottery and Glassmaking
Above the frieze is an inscription in 12-inch-high (30 cm) terracotta letters that combine historical fact and Biblical quotations:
This hall was erected for the advancement of the arts and sciences and works of industry of all nations in fulfilment of the intention of Albert Prince Consort. The site was purchased with the proceeds of the Great Exhibition of the year MDCCCLI. The first stone of the Hall was laid by Her Majesty Queen Victoria on the twentieth day of May MDCCCLXVII and it was opened by Her Majesty the Twenty Ninth of March in the year MDCCCLXXI. Thine O Lord is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty. For all that is in the heaven and in the earth is Thine. The wise and their works are in the hand of God. Glory be to God on high and on earth peace.
Below the Arena floor there is room for two 4,000 gallon water tanks, which are used for shows that flood the arena like Madame Butterfly.
Amphi corridor on the ground floor, facing West from Door 6
The Door 9 porch at night
Second Tier corridor, facing West from Door 6
Fluted aluminium roof and diffuser discs seen from the Gallery
The glazed roof and vertical struts supporting the fluted aluminium ceiling, beneath the wooden floor
Interior of the Royal Albert Hall, showing the stage, seating tiers, and acoustic diffusers beneath the dome.
For a great virtual tour of this extremely cool concert hall, I recommend the following:
