History of the Manchester Apollo

Manchester's Apollo concert venue, known most commonly as 'The Apollo', is one of the city's best known venues and is amongst some of the greatest in the UK. It hasn't always been a concert venue, however, and has actually experienced quite a long and varied history over the years since it was built.



Originally created as far as back 1930, the Apollo was built as a cinema and variety hall and was designed by architects R Gillespie Williams, Alex Irvine and Peter Cummings. For its grand opening, famous actress Margaret Lockwood, who is best known for her performance in 1945 movie The Wicked Lady, made an appearance to cut the ribbon and officially declare the cinema open.



The venue continued to provide cinema and variety hall services, later becoming the ABC Cinema Ardwick, up until the 1970s where it became a solid variety hall after the fall of the cinema during that decade. In order to stay afloat, management decided to focus more on live entertainment and began to host more concerts and performances than cinema screenings, a move which ended up sealing the Apollo's fate as a top class concert venue.

Thanks to its age, the venue is a listed building and is much a tourist attraction in of itself as it is for its concerts - although there have been plenty of incredible artists playing in the 3000 capacity venue over the years. Since the '70s, the likes of Queen, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Erasure, The Rolling Stones, Tracy Chapman, Take That, Ozzy Osbourne, U2 and KISS have performed in the venue, with recent appearances from Lady Gaga and similar popular artists proving the venue's fame and capabilities.



The Apollo is showing no signs of slowing down and always seems ready to add more dates and artists to its annual line up. It is a venue that only sees the best and most popular artists and the building is more than capable of giving other Manchester venues a run for their money. Thanks to its distinctive interior design, which includes a red ceiling and raked flooring which allows for great views of the stage, it is a firm favourite with many music lovers who prefer its excellent vantage points over some of the other concert venues.



If you're going to be visiting the Apollo soon, you can be sure of an excellent concert. Just be sure to stay in one of the nearby Manchester hotels so you don't have to worry about getting to the venue on time and enjoy the show!