Opera has sounded inside the Academy of Music since January 1857, longer than anywhere else in the United States. The Academy of Music opened in January 1857, designed by Napoleon LeBrun and Gustav Runge in an Italian Renaissance style modeled on La Scala in Milan. The opening night gala was attended by 2,500 people; the building had been planned as a great civic monument to the cultural aspirations of a city that already considered itself the Athens of America.
The Academy served as the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra for most of its history, until the orchestra moved to the new Kimmel Center in 2001; it remains the home of Opera Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet. The interior — a horseshoe of boxes and balconies, red and gold, with a massive chandelier — is one of the finest Victorian theater interiors in America and has been restored to something close to its 1857 appearance. The building has no air conditioning, a fact that produced the tradition of the Academy of Music Summer Ball, held every January since 1858 when debutantes were presented to society in the cool of the opera house in midwinter.
If the building is open, go into the lobby; the interior is remarkable.