Best Large House

Boston Symphony Hall is a concert venue located in Boston, Massachusetts, that opened to the public in 1900. It serves as the permanent home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops Orchestra. The building was designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White and was the first audit...

Carnegie Hall is a historic concert venue situated in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, which first opened its doors in 1891. The complex was financed by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and comprises three distinct auditoriums: the Stern Auditorium, Zankel Hall, and Weill Recital Ha...

National Theatre is the United Kingdom's flagship publicly funded theatre on the South Bank, London, founded in 1963 under Laurence Olivier and operating three auditoria in its current building opened in 1976.

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a historic West End playhouse located in Covent Garden, London. It holds the distinction of being the oldest theatrical site in London still in use, with its origins tracing back to 1663 under the management of Thomas Killigrew. The current structure, designed by Ben...

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, opened on September 8, 1971, serves as the national cultural center of the United States in Washington, D.C. The facility features multiple performance venues including the 2,465-seat Concert Hall, the 2,300-seat Opera House, and the 1,100-seat Eis...

Orchestra Hall, located at 220 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, opened on December 14, 1904 as the permanent home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The hall was designed by architect Daniel H. Burnham in a neoclassical style and originally seated approximately 2,500 people. It was designated a Nat...

The Kabuki-za Theatre is the principal venue for traditional kabuki performances in Japan, located in Tokyo's Ginza district. The theater was originally established in 1889 and has been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times due to fires, earthquakes, and air raids. The current structure opened in 201...

The Royal Shakespeare Theatre is a major performing arts venue located in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and serves as the flagship home of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The current building was extensively rebuilt and reopened in 2011, replacing an earlier 1932 structure. It features a prominent th...

Originally known as Grauman's Chinese Theatre, this historic movie palace is located on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, and opened to the public in 1927. The venue is most famous for its forecourt, which features embedded concrete blocks bearing the handprints, footprints, and signat...

The Guthrie Theater is a professional repertory theater in Minneapolis, founded in 1963 by British director Sir Tyrone Guthrie. Its original thrust stage, designed by Ralph Rapson, became a model for the American regional theater movement. In 2006 the company moved to a new three-venue facility on t...

Lincoln Center Theater is a non-profit theatrical production organization based at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Founded in 1985, it operates the Vivian Beaumont Theater, a 1,200-seat venue with a thrust stage, and the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, a smaller off-Broadway spac...

The Stratford Festival is a major repertory theater company located in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1953 by local journalist Tom Patterson and directed by Tyrone Guthrie, the festival initially focused on producing the works of William Shakespeare. Over the decades, its programming has exp...

The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center is a concert hall located in the Arts District of Dallas, Texas, that opened in 1989. The building was designed by architect I.M. Pei, while its acoustics were engineered by Russell Johnson. It serves as the permanent home for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and...

The Elbphilharmonie is a concert hall located in the HafenCity quarter of Hamburg, Germany, which opened in 2017. Designed by the architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, the structure is built on top of a massive 1960s brick warehouse known as Kaispeicher A, combining historic industrial foundations w...

Located on the north side of Times Square in New York City, the Palace Theatre is a historic Broadway venue that originally opened in 1913. It was built by Martin Beck and became a prominent showcase for vaudeville performances. Following its conversion to a legitimate theatrical house, the venue ha...

The Fox Theatre in Detroit, Michigan, is a large performing arts center that opened in 1928 as a movie palace. Designed by architect C. Howard Crane, the 5,000-seat venue features an opulent interior decorated with elaborate Moorish, Indian, and Byzantine architectural elements. It was fully restore...

Opened in 1857 on Broad Street, the Academy of Music is the oldest opera house in continuous use in the United States. Its Victorian horseshoe auditorium was modeled on La Scala and served as the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra from the ensemble's founding in 1900 until the opening of the Kimmel...

Located in Hamburg, Germany, the Thalia Theater is a state-subsidized repertory theater that first opened its doors in 1843. Operating as one of Germany's oldest continuously operating theaters, it presents a program of both classical dramatic works and contemporary plays. The institution manages mu...

The Chicago Theatre is a historic performance venue located at 175 North State Street in Chicago's Loop district. It opened in 1921 as a lavish movie palace and was designed in the French Baroque Revival style by the architectural firm Rapp and Rapp. Its six-story illuminated marquee has become a re...

Goodman Theatre is a nonprofit professional theater company in Chicago, founded in 1925 and named for playwright Kenneth Sawyer Goodman. It operates the Albert and Owen stages in the city's Loop and presents classic plays, contemporary drama, new writing, and its longstanding annual production of A...

The St. James Theatre is a Broadway theater at 246 West 44th Street in Manhattan, opened in 1927 on the site of the former Sardi's restaurant. Designed by architect Warren and Wetmore, it is a large auditorium primarily used for musicals. The theater hosted the original Broadway production of Rodger...

The Winter Garden Theatre is a historic Broadway venue located in midtown Manhattan, New York City. Constructed by the Shubert brothers and officially opened in 1911, the theater was uniquely designed by converting the former American Horse Exchange into a spacious, garden-themed playhouse. It featu...

Arena Stage is a prominent nonprofit theater company based in Washington, D.C., founded in 1950 by Zelda Fichandler and Edward Mangum. It is widely recognized as a foundational institution in the American regional theater movement, pioneering the concept of permanent professional repertory companies...

De Nederlandse Opera, known in English as the Dutch National Opera, is the principal opera company of the Netherlands. Founded in 1946 and based in Amsterdam, the organization is resident at the Dutch National Opera & Ballet theater. It stages a diverse repertoire ranging from Baroque to contemporar...

Playhouse Square is a performing arts center and theater district located in Cleveland, Ohio. The complex consists of five restored 1920s-era movie palaces: the State, Ohio, Palace, Allen, and Hanna theaters. Operating as a non-profit organization, it hosts touring Broadway shows, concerts, and loca...

The Warsaw Grand Theatre, known in Polish as Teatr Wielki, is a historic performing arts complex located in Warsaw, Poland. The original theater opened in 1833, though the building underwent significant reconstruction following its destruction during World War II. It currently houses the Polish Nati...

The Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro is an opera house inaugurated on July 14, 1909, in the Cinelândia district of central Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The building was constructed in a Beaux-Arts style explicitly modeled on the Paris Opéra, featuring a granite and marble exterior, a grand interior st...

The Pantages Theatre is an Art Deco performance venue located at 6233 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. It opened on June 4, 1930, as part of the Pantages theatre circuit and was designed by the architect B. Marcus Priteca. The theatre hosted the Academy Awards ceremonies from 1949 thr...

The Théâtre du Châtelet is a large performing arts venue located in the Place du Châtelet in Paris, France, which opened in 1862. Designed by Gabriel Davioud, the theater originally hosted plays, operettas, and musical concerts. It is historically significant for presenting major productions across...