1871, ROYAL ALBERT HALL IS OPENED BY QUEEN VICTORIA

Today, The Grandma has remembered her last visit to the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington, London, a wonderful place that was opened on a day like today in 1871.

The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London.

One of the United Kingdom's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no government funding. It can seat 5,272.

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 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 400 events are held each year in the non-auditorium spaces.

The hall was originally supposed 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.

More information: Royal Albert Hall

n 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 proposal was approved, and the site was purchased with some of the profits from the Exhibition. The Hall was designed by civil engineers Captain Francis Fowke and Major-General Henry Y. D. Scott of the Royal Engineers and built by Lucas Brothers.

The designers were heavily influenced by ancient amphitheatres but had also been exposed to the ideas of Gottfried Semper while he was working at the South Kensington Museum. The recently opened Cirque d'Hiver in Paris was seen in the contemporary press as the design to outdo. The Hall was constructed mainly of Fareham Red brick, with terra cotta block decoration made by Gibbs and Canning Limited of Tamworth.

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 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 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 Hall, a Grade I listed building, is an ellipse in plan, with its external major and minor axis of 83 and 72 meters, and its internal minor and major axis of 56 and 67 m.

The great glass and wrought-iron dome roofing the Hall is 41 metres 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.

More information: Twitter-Royal Albert Hall

 As an architect, you have to provide a shelter to enjoy art.
And you have to love art. It's like when you make a concert hall.
You must love music.
This is the reason why you make the space, to enjoy music
-making a space for art is the same thing.

Renzo Piano