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The Sydney Opera House
by Enoch Lau, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Sydney_Opera_House_Sails.jpg, under GNU Free Documentation License
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.
Associate Links
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, used under GNU Free Documentation License
Night view of the Sydney Opera House
by Mdd4696, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Sydney_Opera_House_-_Up_Close_at_night.jpg, used under GNU Free Documentation License
Concert inside the Sydney Opera House
by Ron & Jules, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Concert_at_Sydney_Opera_House_2007.jpg, used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License
Return to Sydney Travel Guide or to Australia Travel Guide
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| The EarthDocumentary logo © copyright Timothy Tye 2007-2010. Content and articles in EarthDocumentary are provided in goodwill and are believed to be correct at time of writing. While every reasonable care is taken to check and verify the information shared, EarthDocumentary disclaims responsible for the use of information. Text in EarthDocumentary is available under Creative Commons Attribution/ShareAlike License meaning you are free to copy, distribute, transmit, adapt and make derivative works, as long as you attribute your resulting work and apply it under the same, similar or a compatible license. Wikipedia and Wikitravel are cited as among the sources of references. Photographs appearing in EarthDocumentary are available according to the licensing specified in its caption. Photographs supplied by Panoramio are governed by the Panoramio API terms & condition, are for display only, and may not be downloaded for use. Photographs belonging to the author are the copyright of Timothy Tye and may not be reused without prior written permission from the author. Contact author for licensing terms. |
