A domed Edwardian concert hall paid for by a brewer, with the best acoustic in Scotland and a glass wing bolted onto the side.
Andrew Usher, a whisky blender and brewer, gave the city £100,000 in 1896 to build a concert hall. He died in 1898, the site took years to settle, and the hall finally opened in 1914, four months before the outbreak of the First World War.
It is a domed, elliptical Beaux-Arts building in sandstone, seating about 2,200, and its acoustic is generally reckoned the best in Scotland and among the better ones in Britain — warm, generous, and forgiving in a way that suits large romantic orchestral repertoire particularly well.
A glass-fronted extension was added in 2010 down one side, housing the box office, bars and lifts. Opinion on it is divided along entirely predictable lines.
What is on
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra both play regular seasons here, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra appears frequently. Visiting international orchestras come through, and the hall is one of the principal venues of the Edinburgh International Festival in August, when it hosts most of the major orchestral concerts.
Outside classical music it takes touring rock, folk, comedy and spoken-word events, which sit oddly in the room but pay for it.
Prices
Considerably cheaper than an equivalent hall in London. Upper circle seats for an RSNO concert cost about what a cinema ticket costs, and the sound from there is arguably better than the stalls. Under-26 and student schemes are generous.
Festival concerts are the exception and are priced accordingly.
The venues around it
Lothian Road is Edinburgh’s theatre street. The Royal Lyceum Theatre next door, of 1883, is the city’s main producing theatre and one of the loveliest Victorian auditoriums in Scotland. The Traverse across the road is the new-writing theatre and a Fringe institution, with a bar that functions as the festival’s unofficial green room. The Filmhouse, the independent cinema, closed in 2022 when its parent charity collapsed and reopened in 2025 after a campaign.
The Festival Theatre on Nicolson Street, a large lyric house behind a glass front, takes opera and ballet.
Practicalities
Box office online or in the glass wing. The building is fully accessible, which the 2010 extension was largely built to achieve. Bars open an hour before performances and there is a restaurant in the Grand Circle.
