The Sydney Opera House From the Inside Looking Out

Everyone has seen the Sydney Opera House from the outside — the white sail roofs on Bennelong Point, the harbour behind them, the postcard image so familiar it has become abstract. What the postcard cannot capture is standing inside the Concert Hall, looking up at the ceiling designed by Jorn Utzon to resemble the interior of a seashell, and feeling the acoustics of a room that was engineered to make a single human voice carry to every seat without amplification.

The guided tour ($43) takes you through the major performance spaces — the Concert Hall, the Drama Theatre, the Joan Sutherland Theatre — and the backstage areas where the architecture's engineering becomes visible. The building took 16 years to construct (1957-1973), cost fourteen times its original estimate, and nearly destroyed its architect's career, and none of that matters once you're inside and the room proves that the ambition was justified.

What visitors miss: The Bennelong restaurant inside the Opera House, run by chef Peter Gilmore. Even if you don't eat there, the bar serves drinks with a harbour view through the glass walls, and the experience of having a cocktail inside the Opera House while the ferries cross the water outside is worth the price of the glass.