On your right, look for the long, pale cream building with rows of rectangular windows and a green canopy jutting out over the sidewalk, with “THEATRE” written high up near the roofline.
This is the Theatre Royal, the grand old survivor of Glasgow showbiz: the city’s oldest theatre, and the longest continuously running one in Scotland. It’s been entertaining crowds here since 1867-back when “a night out” meant gaslight, top hats, and trying not to get trampled by a horse on the way home.
It actually opened under a different name: the Royal Colosseum and Opera House, launched by an impresario named James Baylis. Baylis wasn’t exactly timid-he also ran other lively venues nearby-so he filled this place with whatever sold: pantomimes, comedies, plays, harlequinades, and yes, opera. That last bit matters, because the Theatre Royal later became the home of Scottish Opera in 1975. It’s like the building picked a specialty early on, then took a century-long detour through absolutely everything else.
Two years after opening, the name “Theatre Royal” arrived when new managers, Glover and Francis, brought it over from an earlier Theatre Royal on Dunlop Street-demolished to make way for St Enoch railway station. Glasgow has always had a talent for swapping culture for infrastructure, then building more culture anyway.
Now, theatre buildings are magnets for drama in more ways than one. In 1879, a fire wiped out the auditorium. The rebuild gave the theatre its most recognizable look: a classical French Renaissance design by the famed theatre architect Charles J. Phipps. He added a third gallery and reoriented the entrance to face Hope Street. Today, it’s considered the largest surviving example of Phipps’s theatre work in Britain-basically, his greatest hit.
In the late 1880s, a local power broker, Baillie Michael Simons, helped hand the reins to two actor-managers, James Howard and Fred Wyndham. Their company, Howard and Wyndham, turned this place into a pantomime powerhouse-starting with The Forty Thieves-and grew into a major theatre empire for decades.
Then came another reinvention: in 1957 the building was sold for television, becoming a Scottish Television theatre and studio. Live music, dance, and comedy beamed out from here across Scotland and beyond-until, in 1969, another fire broke out, tragically killing a firefighter.
The big comeback arrived in 1974 when Scottish Television moved next door and Scottish Opera bought the building with public support, transforming it into Scotland’s first national opera house. The foyer expanded, the orchestra pit grew to fit around 100 players, and the auditorium was restored in cream, gold, and pale blue-plus a dash of William Morris wallpaper, because opera deserves good wallpaper. It reopened in 1975 with Die Fledermaus, broadcast live, and has kept singing ever since-now seating about 1,541.
When you’re ready for Celtic Connections, just walk south for about 6 minutes.
