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London's stages and concert rooms: the West End houses and the playhouses that make their own shows, the grand halls, the churches with a musical life, the jazz basements, the comedy clubs, the clubs proper, and the rooms above pubs where things start. What is on is listed under each venue, and in What's On.
What is on at them this week is in What's On: Performance
Victoria's memorial to her husband, built as an amphitheatre for five thousand, and the home of the Proms since the war.
ClassicalWorth it for the building
Albert wanted a hall at the centre of the museums quarter his Great Exhibition profits had paid for, and did not live to see it; Victoria opened it in 1871 and added his name to the title at the last moment. The shape is a Roman amphitheatre in red brick and terracotta, wrapped in a frieze of figures representing the arts and sciences.
It had one famous fault. The dome threw a distinct echo, and the joke was that it was the only place a British composer could be sure of hearing his work twice. The fibreglass discs hung under the roof in 1969 - everyone calls them the mushrooms - are what finally cured it.
The Proms moved here in 1941 after the Queen's Hall was destroyed by bombing, and stayed. For eight weeks each summer the seats come out of the arena floor and it is sold standing, which is the cheapest way to hear a world-class orchestra anywhere in the city.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.