This article is about the London concert hall. For other uses, see Albert Hall
(disambiguation).
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South
Kensington, London, England. It has a seating capacity of 5,272.[1]
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.[2][3][4]
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.
History
1800s
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.[5]
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.[6] 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.[5] The recently
opened Cirque d'Hiver in Paris was seen in the contemporary press as the design to
outdo.[citation needed] The hall was constructed mainly of Fareham Red brick, with terra
cotta block decoration made by Gibbs and Canning of Tamworth.[7][5]
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).[8] The hall was scheduled to be
completed by Christmas Day 1870, and the Queen visited a few