The Harold Pinter Theatre

The Harold Pinter Theatre has stood on Panton Street since eighteen eighty-one, when it was built in a remarkably short six months. Its original architect, Thomas Verity, designed it with a classical facade and an interior arranged in a four-tier, horseshoe-shaped balcony layout. You are looking at one of only three West End theaters from before eighteen ninety that still retains its original auditorium structure largely intact. If you look closely at the ceiling of the auditorium, you can spot a rare surviving piece of nineteenth-century engineering known as a gas sunburner, an elaborate circular centerpiece once used to illuminate the house before electricity became the standard.