musical.today Birmingham, United Kingdom
Birmingham Hippodrome
1,935 seats
More than 600,000 people a year come through the doors, which makes this the busiest single theatre in the United Kingdom and the busiest dance venue outside London. It is the home stage of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, and it started life as a set of assembly rooms with a circus ring and a Moorish tower.
The building
Assembly rooms went up on Hurst Street in 1895; F. W. Lloyd added a stage, a circus ring and a tower four years later. It failed, reopened as the Tivoli in 1900, and became the Hippodrome under Thomas Barrasford in 1903. The neo-classical auditorium in use today was built in 1924.
The entrance and the tower were demolished in 1963 when Smallbrook Queensway went through. The city council bought the theatre in the 1970s and a registered charity has run it since 1979; the stagehouse was rebuilt in the 1980s so that the largest touring sets would fit.
Opening dates, capacities and architects on this page come from the theatre's own history pages and from Wikipedia.