Sydney Opera House

Sydney Opera House is one of the famous and easily recognised buildings in Australia. It is also one of the most famous buildings ever constructed in the 20th century. The Sydney Opera House is located at Bennelong Point, a headland in Sydney Harbour. Bennelong Point was originally just a tidal island that was originally called Tubowghule in its aboriginal name, but was renamed Bennelong after an aborigine named Bennelong who had his house there. From Bennelong Point, one can get a great view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge nearby.

Although the Sydney Opera House was conceptualised in the late 1940s, it was only completed in 1973, at a cost of A$102 million, way above the original estimate of $7 million. The design was submitted by a Danish architect, Jørn Utzon. The Sydney Opera House was opened by Queen Elizabeth II, as Queen of Australia, on 20 October, 1973.

The Sydney Opera House contains five theatres, five rehearsal studios, two main halls, and four restaurants, among others. The Concert Hall, which seats 2679, has the world's largest mechanical tracker action organ, with over 10,000 pipes. The structure looks like white sails against the Sydney Harbour, although the Swedish-made tiles were actually matte-cream. It takes over a million pieces of the tiles to clad the Sydney Opera House.

The Sydney Opera House has been a venue of many important events, most recently it hosted the APEC Australia 2007 in September 2007, seeing leaders from 21 countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. On 29 June, 2007, the Sydney Opera House was inscribed by Unesco as a World Heritage Site at its committee meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The Sydney Opera House
by Enoch Lau, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Sydney_Opera_House_Sails.jpg (GNU General Public License)

Closeup of the roof tiles of the Sydney Opera House
Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Sydney_opera_house_wall.JPG, available in the public domain

Sydney Opera House from another angle
by Bjarte Sorensen, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:SydneyOperaHouse.jpg (GNU General Public License)

Night view of the Sydney Opera House
by Mdd4696, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Sydney_Opera_House_-_Up_Close_at_night.jpg (GNU General Public License)

Concert inside the Sydney Opera House
by Ron & Jules, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Concert_at_Sydney_Opera_House_2007.jpg (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

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