In the round Royal Albert Hall, London SW7
AT noon on Wednesday, March 29, 1871, Queen Victoria set off in a royal cavalcade of nine closed carriages from Buckingham Palace for the official opening of the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences in South Kensington. Undeterred by a biting wind, large crowds assembled to line the route and an audience of nearly 8,000 people gathered in the building itself. A report in The Times marvelled at the ease and speed with which this glittering assembly took their seats in what was then one of the largest roofed interiors in Europe (Fig 8). Moments before the formal proceedings began, everyone present in this great amphitheatre, including 900 singers and 200 instrumentalists, stilled themselves to allow a photographer with a stereoscopic camera to record the scene.
‘Queen Victoria wrote that the “intensely crowded” space “made me feel quite giddy”’
As the Queen entered the hall, the audience rose to their feet. She wrote in her journal that the ‘intensely crowded’ space ‘made me feel quite giddy’. In a short speech of welcome by the Prince of Wales—rendered awkward by the echoing acoustics, a
