Tianjin Museum of Theatre, Theatre museum in Nankai District, Tianjin, China

The Tianjin Museum of Theatre occupies the Guangdong Guild Hall, a brick-and-timber courtyard complex completed in 1907 at 31 Nanmenli Street, Gulou Subdistrict. Its岭南-style gable walls and covered corridors surround a theatre building whose stage, 10 m deep and 11 m wide, is topped by a 10-tonne spiral dougong dome. Exhibition rooms hold over 4,000 theatre relics.

The Guangdong Guild Hall was built between 1907 and 1908 by Tianjin's Cantonese merchant community, led by Tang Shaoyi, on the former site of the salt administration office south of the Drum Tower. In 1912 Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing spoke from its stage; in 1919 Deng Yingchao led fundraising performances here, and in 1925 the Tianjin General Trade Union was founded in the building. After 1949 the surrounding rooms housed a middle school, and in 1985 the city government established the Tianjin Theatre Museum on the site.

The hall was built as a meeting and assembly place for merchants from Guangdong, not performers; its name refers to that native-place association. The theatre museum opened on the site in 1985, and the stage later drew Peking opera stars such as Mei Lanfang, Shang Xiaoyun and Ma Lianliang, whose costumes and paintings are among the more than 4,000 opera-related objects held here.

The guild hall stands at No. 31 Nanmenli Street, south of the Drum Tower in Nankai District, in Tianjin's old city. The theatre museum occupies the former guild compound, whose stage seats 600 to 700 people, with boxes upstairs and open seating below. The hall's 300-plus shops and lodgings around the courtyard were later converted into a middle school.

The stage's ceiling is a spiral caisson of interlocking wooden brackets, about 10 tonnes, square outside and round inside; it is said to carry sound to every corner of the hall. The stage itself is 10 m deep and 11 m wide, and the hall held 600 to 700 people, with boxes upstairs and open seating below.