Brighton Dome

The Brighton Dome is an arts venue in Brighton, a brilliant entertainment venue and unique centre for conferences which contains the Concert Hall, Corn Exchange and the Pavilion Theatre. All three venues are linked to the rest of the Royal Pavilion Estate by an underground tunnel to the Royal Pavilion in Pavilion Gardens and through shared corridors to Brighton Museum, as the entire complex was built for the Prince of Wales and completed in 1805.

Originally the Concert Hall was the Prince of Wales' stables with the Corn Exchange being a riding school. William Porden designed the new stables and riding school for the Prince. Inspired by water colour pictures of India he created an incredible building in the Indo-Saracenic style with a vast glass dome (24 metres in diameter and 19 metres high) covering the main hall. Many pessimists predicted that this daring construction would collapse once the scaffolding was removed. The stables were converted to a Concert Hall around 1860. Since this time the Corn Exchange and Concert Hall have gone through many different guises with the latest renovation of the Concert Hall taking place in 2001/2 and costing £22m. This rebirth was ushered in with the help of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Courtney Pine, Nigel Kennedy and Fatboy Slim(amongst others).

It famously staged the Eurovision Song Contest on 6 April 1974 where ABBA won for Sweden with Waterloo. Other notables to have appeared at Brighton Dome include Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and more recently Dizee Rascal, Beyoncé and Kasabian. The venue now plays host to a varied programme of events; with concerts from every musical style, serious plays and family theatre, ballet and contemporary dance, comedy and it is also available for private conferences.
For more information, and what’s on at the Brighton Dome, visit www.brightondome.org