On June 28, 2007, the Sydney Opera House was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List, placing it alongside the Taj Mahal, the ancient Pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China as one of the most outstanding places on Earth. Quite familiar with its exterior, which I had admired from the MS Queen Victoria when she was moored across the harbor in 2009, I toured the inside this time. I knew the interior would be interesting, but simply put, the Sydney Opera House took my breath away.
The engineering behind the architecture is on full display at every turn. Look up. Look down. Look around. You are wrapped in angles, curves and shadows on a large scale. The iconic Australian structure celebrated its 50th anniversary in October 2023. Queen Elizabeth II presided over its opening in 1973.
The design was awarded to Danish architect Jørn Utzon in 1957, besting designs submitted by 233 architects world-wide. The design was a major challenge for engineers working on the plan. The sculptural shells were sketched as sails soaring over the venue’s auditorium in the harbor by the Tasman Sea; but the design proved impractical to build. The project team spent four years trying out different solutions. The work saw some of the earliest use of computers for building design, as engineers worked out the complex forces the shells would have to cope with. Eventually, Utzon’s vision for how to bring his design to fruition clashed with required modifications, and he was forced to resign in the middle of construction, having never seen his design completed. A major flaw in the design, to my mind, was the absence of elevators. There are staircases galore in the massive house, whose tallest sail measures 22 stories high. An elevator was retrofitted a few years ago.
We can’t talk about the opera house without talking about the shells that comprise the roof. Tiles were placed face down in one of 26 chevron shaped beds each with a base shaped to match the curve of the roof. In total, there are 1,056,006 glazed white granite tiles on the roof. Utzon would remark that the tiles “were a major item in the building.” They were designed to be self-cleaning by rainwater.
The opera house sees over 1,500 performances every year, attended by more than 1.2 million people. More than 8 million people visit the building annually with 350,000 taking a guided tour of the building, as we did. The house is home to the Opera Australia, the Sydney Theatre Company and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. As well as a 2,679-seat concert hall, it also stages concerts, ballets and even stand-up comedians in three main theaters and a studio theater. Arnold Schwarzenegger won his final Mr. Olympia body building title in the Concert Hall in 1980.
There is a court for outdoor productions as well as restaurants, cafes and bars. From the immense walls of glass and from the alfresco restaurant, one views downtown Sydney, the harbor and the Harbor Bridge, all in one sweep of the eye. Let’s take a look!
Postcards 
Good
Amazing