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The Capitol, Melbourne

1924 establishments in AustraliaArt Deco architecture in MelbourneBuildings and structures in MelbourneChicago school architecture in AustraliaCinemas in Australia
Cinemas in MelbourneHeritage-listed buildings in MelbourneLandmarks in MelbourneMelbourne City CentreRMIT University buildingsTheatres completed in 1924Theatres in MelbourneUse Australian English from March 2015Walter Burley Griffin buildings
Capitol Theatre Melbourne coloured LED lighting
Capitol Theatre Melbourne coloured LED lighting

The Capitol is an historic theatre on Swanston Street in the central business district (CBD) of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Opened in 1924 as part of the Capitol House building, the art deco theatre was designed by American husband and wife architects Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin, and is the oldest of Melbourne's large picture palaces. It is famous for its extravagant decor and abstract motifs, including an intricate geometric ceiling containing thousands of coloured lamps, designed to evoke the walls of a crystalline cave. Proposals in the early 1960s to demolish the theatre sparked one of Australia's first major heritage conservation campaigns. While the cinema was saved, its seating capacity was reduced and parts of the original ground level foyer were replaced by a shopping arcade. RMIT University purchased The Capitol in 1999 for use as a lecture theatre, and in 2014 it was closed to undergo an extensive five-year restoration and upgrade. The Capitol reopened in 2019 and has since hosted various film festival screenings, theatrical performances and other events. The Capitol is registered with the Australian Heritage Council, the National Trust of Australia and Heritage Victoria, which describes its avant-garde design as "extremely unusual in the realm of theatres and cinemas worldwide" and "a technical triumph".

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article The Capitol, Melbourne (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

The Capitol, Melbourne
Flinders Street, Melbourne Melbourne

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Wikipedia: The Capitol, MelbourneContinue reading on Wikipedia

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Latitude Longitude
N -37.81536 ° E 144.96636 °
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Town Hall (CBD South)

Flinders Street
3000 Melbourne, Melbourne
Victoria, Australia
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Capitol Theatre Melbourne coloured LED lighting
Capitol Theatre Melbourne coloured LED lighting
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Melbourne
Melbourne

Melbourne ( (listen) MEL-bərn) (Boonwurrung: Naarm) is the capital and most-populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a 9,993 km2 (3,858 sq mi) metropolitan area known as Greater Melbourne, comprising an urban agglomeration of 31 local municipalities, although the name is also used specifically for the local municipality of City of Melbourne based around its central business area. The city occupies much of the northern and eastern coastlines of Port Phillip Bay and spreads into the Mornington Peninsula and the hinterlands towards the Yarra Valley and the Dandenong and Macedon Ranges. It has a population over 5-million (19% of the population of Australia, as per 2020), mostly residing to the east side of the city centre, and its inhabitants are commonly referred to as "Melburnians".The area of Melbourne has been home to Aboriginal peoples for over 40,000 years and serves as an important meeting place for local Kulin nation clans. Of the five peoples of the Kulin nation, the traditional owners of the land encompassing Melbourne are the Boonwurrung and the Wurundjeri peoples. The name Naarm is commonly used by the broader Aboriginal community to refer to the city, stemming from the traditional Boonwurrung name for Port Phillip Bay.A short-lived penal settlement was built at Port Phillip, then part of the British colony of New South Wales, in 1803, but it was not until 1835, with the arrival of free settlers from Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania), that Melbourne was founded. It was incorporated as a Crown settlement in 1837, and named after the then British Prime Minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. In 1851, four years after Queen Victoria declared it a city, Melbourne became the capital of the new colony of Victoria. During the 1850s Victorian gold rush, the city entered a lengthy boom period that, by the late 1880s, had transformed it into one of the world's largest and wealthiest metropolises. After the federation of Australia in 1901, it served as the interim seat of government of the new nation until Canberra became the permanent capital in 1927. Today, it is a leading financial centre in the Asia-Pacific region and ranks 23rd globally in the 2021 Global Financial Centres Index.Melbourne is home to many of Australia's best-known landmarks, such as the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the National Gallery of Victoria and the World Heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building. Noted for its cultural heritage, the city gave rise to Australian rules football, Australian impressionism and Australian cinema, and has more recently been recognised as a UNESCO City of Literature and a global centre for street art, live music and theatre. It hosts major annual international events, such as the Australian Grand Prix and the Australian Open, and also hosted the 1956 Summer Olympics and the 2006 Commonwealth Games, and will host the 2026 Commonwealth Games, along with a number of regional areas of Victoria. It was host to the 1880 World's Fair. Melbourne consistently ranked as the world's most liveable city for much of the 2010s.Melbourne Airport, also known as the Tullamarine Airport, is the second-busiest airport in Australia, and the Port of Melbourne is the nation's busiest seaport. Its main metropolitan rail terminus is Flinders Street station and its main regional rail and road coach terminus is Southern Cross station. It also has Australia's most extensive freeway network and the largest urban tram network in the world.