St Cecilia's Hall

St Cecilia's Hall was originally commissioned by the Edinburgh Musical Society (EMS) and designed by the Scottish architect Robert Mylne, who also designed Blackfriars Bridge in London. The EMS was founded in 1728, and for its first 35 years its members met in the upper hall of St Mary's Chapel, a small church that formerly stood to the north of the present hall. In December 1763, after completion of Mylne's new hall, the EMS held an inaugural concert in honour of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of musicians. St Cecilia's was the first purpose-built concert hall in Scotland when it was completed in 1763, not far behind the first in Europe, the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, built in 1748. Mylne…

The exterior is in plain Neoclassical style, with ashlar facing. On the upper floor is the Sypert Concert Room, an elliptical room with a moulded plaster cornice, and a domed ceiling topped with a central elliptical cupola. William Adam (1738–1822) visited the hall and wrote to his brother John Adam that he had found it "ugly and squat". In 1966, the university commissioned the architect Ian Lindsay to reconstruct the interior of the concert hall. He built a new eastern elevation and made a new entrance to the hall. The Hall opened after the restoration in 1968. In 2016, St Cecilia's Hall underwent a £6.5m restoration and renovation in order to improve the concert hall and museum…