The Sydney Opera House

The Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia, is famous throughout the world.


It stands on Bennelong Point, a point of land that juts into Sydney Harbour, near the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The roof of the opera house was designed and built to look like a ship under full sail. Since its official opening on October 20, 1973, the building and its spectacular white-sailed roof have become a symbol of Australia.


The Sydney Opera House was designed in the late 1950s by Jorn Utzon, a Danish architect. He quit the project in 1966 due to differences with the state government over cost and design issues, and the building was not completed until 1973.


The opera house cost close to $100 million to construct. It is 600 feet tall, almost 390 feet wide in places, and more than 600 feet long. It sits on 580 concrete piers, some of which are sunk 80 feet below the sea. Over 1 million white tiles were used to construct its famous roof, and the roof sections are held together by over 200 miles of steel cable. 

The building has five performance rooms. The largest is the Concert Hall (2,679 seats); the smallest is the Studio Theatre (364 seats). Each year, more than 2 million people attend the 3,000 performances that are held in the various venues. These include performances by Opera Australia, as well as by the Sydney Theatre Company and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Rehearsal halls, restaurants, bars, and souvenir shops are among the more than 1,000 rooms in the building. 

The Sydney Opera House is considered by many to be one of the finest examples of modern abstract architectural design in the world.