Description of the attraction
The Royal Exhibition Center is a stately building located in Carlton Gardens, Melbourne, close to downtown Melbourne. This is the first building in Australia to be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Next to it is the Melbourne Museum, and the building itself is part of the collection of the Victoria Museum.
The Royal Exhibition Center was specially built to host the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880. I must say that the building of the center is one of the few surviving pavilions in the world, built in the 19th century to host an international exhibition. The first exhibition was a tremendous success - over a million people visited it in 8 months! Following it, in 1888, the center hosted another major international event - an exhibition dedicated to the centenary of the development of Australia.
The building consists of a Great Hall with an area of over 12 thousand square meters. and many smaller rooms. The model for the huge dome was the dome of the famous Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.
It was in this building that the independence of Australia was proclaimed in 1901, and for 26 years after that, the government of the state of Victoria sat here. During the First World War, a temporary hospital was located in the building of the center, during the Second an army camp was set up.
In the 1950s, there were blasphemous plans to demolish the center and build office buildings in its place. After the grand ballroom was dismantled in 1979, the public was stirred up by a wave of protests and campaigns to protect the historic site. Princess Alexandra, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, who visited Melbourne in 1984 and awarded the center the title of "Royal", contributed to this. This was the impetus for the start of restoration work and the transformation of the center into a museum. It was as a result of a public campaign for the preservation of the Royal Exhibition Center that the idea of including it in the UNESCO World Heritage List was born, which happened in 2004. Together with the center, the surrounding Carlton Gardens was taken under the protection of UNESCO. Today, the Royal Exhibition Center hosts various events, such as the annual International Flower Show. It is interesting that the final exams of a number of educational institutions in Melbourne are also held here.
