Tour around the Royal Albert Hall

Website: http://www.royalalberthall.com

Today I went on the 10.30am tour around the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington. There are multiple tours everyday but today there were only 2 in the morning because "Cirque du Soleil" was showing in the afternoon.

I've been to quite a few shows at the Albert Hall (including a Cream reunion concert, ballet, the proms, indoor tennis... even my graduation!) so I was looking forward to learning a bit of "insider information".

The tour started promptly at 10.30am. About 15 of us were hanging around Door 12 when we were greeted by Helen who's worked at the Albert Hall for 10 years. She asked everyone if we'd been to the venue before and where we were from. There were people form Australia, Sweden, Germany and, slightly less exotic, Bedford. Helen explained that we were not allowed to take photos and then led us away from the Box Office into the circular corridors on ground level.

Lining the corridors are photos of famous or unusual performances at the Albert Hall and, as she led us up to see the boxes, she explained that sport has been very big in the venue's history. They've had tennis (during the Masters Tennis)basketball, sumo wrestling and even a marathon (In 1909 two athletes tried to run 500 laps of the inner corridor on a bedding of coconut leaves. Neither made it!).

We were led upstairs to sit in the boxes overlooking the stage. Here we had a rest in the chairs and were taught some history of the hall. It was opened in 1871 and was designed to be an amphitheatre with a roof. The roof ended up causing enormous difficulties however because it echoed the sound around the performance space. This was good if a choir was singing but bad if there was a soloist or pianist. People would apparently say "It's good value for money at the Albert Hall - you hear the concert once and then again 2 or 3 seconds later...". The modern solution to these echoing difficulties was put in place in 1969. It involves a host of upsidedown "mushrooms" suspended from the roof: These scatter the sound waves all around the room before they can get to the roof. Any sounds that do get to the roof then bounce back into the mushrooms and are dampened down.

The hall hosts around 360 events every year and has a audience capacity of 4,500 to 6,000 depending on the event.

We then left the boxes we were in an took a sneak peak at the Queen's box. This was bought by Queen Victoria and has a prominent crown displayed above it. It is where royalty sit when they come to an event at the Albert Hall but, when there's no royals attending an event, the box is used by people that work for the Queen (e.g. stable hands at Windsor, secretaries at Buckingham Palace etc). It seems like it's a perk of the job.

This Queen's box (which is always called the Queen's box even when a king is monarch because it was Queen Victoria who bought it) opened up the whole issue of ownership of seats. To raise money to build the Albert Hall they sold a few hundred seats for £100 each. The lease for these was 999 years (!) and the seats were passed down through families. In the 137 years the Albert Hall's been around a lot of the seats have, however, ended up being bought as investments by companies and banks. They are occasionally sold by closed auction in the Times but prices are high. One couple on the tour said they saw 5 seats sell for £100,000 a few years ago. If you do own a seat you get to go to pretty much any event you like...

We then visited the Royal Retiring Room where royalty come to relax before and after a show. This has portraits of all the leading royals since Queen Victoria. Here we were told that the Albert Hall was built as a memorial to Prince Albert by his widow Queen Victoria. Albert had conceived of turning South Kensington into a centre of culture and science. After his death the plans were followed through and the Royal Albert Hall, Royal College of Art, Imperial College, Royal College of Music, National Geographical Society, Science Museum, Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum were built. This vast complex was nicknamed "Albertopolis".

We then climbed up to the "Gallery" - a standing-only viewing area that rings around the top of the auditorium. This is fairly plain now but used to be the social area with paintings on display (hence "the Gallery"). We took a quick look out at the closed-off balcony before descending the stairs again. We'd been asking so many questions we were in danger of making Helen late for her 11.30am tour. She led us back to Door 12 and said goodbye.

The hall used to be powered by steam and the chimney outside is the disused (but listed) steam vent:Summary: Interesting glimpse into the history of the place. Could do with some more "behind-the-scenes" restricted access.