St Cecilia's Hall, Concert hall and musical instrument museum in Edinburgh, Scotland.
St Cecilia's Hall is a concert hall and musical instrument museum on Niddry Street in Edinburgh, owned and operated by the University of Edinburgh. It contains two performance spaces and displays a collection of instruments spanning roughly five centuries of music making.
The hall was built in 1763 to a design by architect Robert Mylne, making it one of the oldest surviving concert venues in Scotland. It was later taken over and restored by the University of Edinburgh, which transformed it into a museum while keeping it as a working concert space.
The University of Edinburgh runs the hall as a working concert venue where musicians regularly perform on historical instruments drawn from the collection itself. This means visitors can hear music played on instruments that have not been heard in a concert setting for centuries.
The entrance is on Niddry Street in Edinburgh's Old Town, a short walk from the Royal Mile and easy to find on foot. The building has a lift, wheelchair access, and accessible toilets, so visitors with mobility needs can move through the spaces without difficulty.
Some instruments in the collection have been restored to playing condition specifically for use in the hall's own concerts, meaning they are heard in the very room they were once meant for. Among them are harpsichords built around the same period as the hall itself.
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