Academy of Music

The Academy of Music is Philadelphia's oldest grand opera house and one of the last continually operating 19th-century opera venues in the United States. Opened in 1857 and modeled loosely on Milan's La Scala, it was designed by Napoleon LeBrun and Gustavus Runge in a Neorenaissancestyle that still dominates its Broad Street facade. The Philadelphia Orchestra called it home for more than a century before moving to the Kimmel Center in 2001. Today it hosts Opera Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet. The interior — horseshoe balconies, red plush seating, and a central chandelier — delivers an atmosphere closer to a European opera house of the 1870s than almost anything else surviving in North America, and its listing on the National Register of Historic Places reflects that rarity.