Welcome to Bedtime History.
Hello, this is Breck.
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Imagine you're walking along the harbor in Sydney, Australia with your family.
It's a beautiful sunny day and the water sparkles blue all around you.
Then you see it.
Rising up ahead of you is the most amazing building you've ever seen.
It looks like giant white sails floating above the water.
Or maybe it looks like seashells or clouds.
You can't quite decide.
The Sydney Opera House stands before you, and it's even more incredible than the pictures you've seen.
The white roof shells gleam in the sunlight.
You walk closer and closer, your eyes wide with wonder.
This building doesn't look like any other building in the world.
Your family walks up the huge steps leading to the entrance.
You reach out and touch the walls.
They're covered in thousands of white tiles that shimmer in the sun.
You walk inside and everything changes.
The space feels warm and cozy.
There's beautiful wood everywhere.
The ceiling curves above you.
You find your seats in the concert hall just as the lights begin to dim.
The orchestra starts to play and the sound fills the room perfectly.
You look around at the curved wooden walls and ceiling.
Everything about this building is special.
You're sitting inside one of the most famous buildings in the world and you'll remember this moment forever.
The Sydney Opera House sits on a point of land called Bennelong Point that sticks out into Sydney Harbor.
It's right on the edge of the water, so ships and boats sail past it every day.
The location is perfect because the building looks like it's floating on the ocean.
Before the opera house was built, there was an old tram depot on this spot.
Nobody could have imagined that one day this place would become home to one of the world's most famous buildings.
The story of the Sydney Opera House begins in 1957.
The government of New South Wales and Australia wanted to build a special place for concerts, operas and plays.
They held a competition to see who could design the best building.
Architects from all over the world sent in their ideas.
There were 233 designs from 32 different countries.
Some of the most famous architects in the world entered the competition.
A Danish architect named Jørn Utzon sent in his drawings.
He was 38 years old and working in a small office in Denmark.
Utzon's design was completely different from anything anyone had seen before.
He drew a building with roof shells that looked like sails or seashells.
The judges loved it.
Even though Utzon wasn't famous yet, his design won the competition.
He was shocked and thrilled when he heard the news.
But winning the competition was just the beginning.
Building Utzon's design turned out to be incredibly difficult.
Nobody had ever built anything like it before.
The sail-shaped shells were beautiful in the drawings, but how could they actually be built?
Engineers worked for years trying to figure it out.
At first they couldn't find a way to make the shells work.
Then Utzon had a brilliant idea.
He realized that all the shells could be pieces cut from one giant sphere.
Imagine a huge ball, like a basketball, but enormous.
If you cut curved pieces from that ball, you could create all the different shells for the roof.
This was called the spherical solution.
It was a breakthrough that made the building possible to construct.
Utzon's idea was so clever that it changed architecture forever.
Construction began in 1959.
Building the opera house took 14 years.
That's longer than most buildings take to build.
Workers had to solve problems that nobody had faced before.
First, they built the base and the platform.
The building sits on 588 concrete piers that go deep into the ground, some as deep as 82 feet below sea level.
These piers hold up the entire building.
Then came the hard part, building the shells.
Workers made the shells out of concrete in sections called ribs.
They made 2,400 concrete ribs and 4,000 roof panels.
They built a factory right there on the construction site to make all these pieces.
The ribs were fitted together like a giant puzzle.
Each shell is actually made up of many sections joined together.
Covering the shells with tiles was another huge job.
The tiles had to be special because they needed to handle Australia's hot sun and salty ocean air.
Workers used more than 1 million tiles to cover the roof.
That's 1,056,006 tiles total.
The tiles were made in Sweden and shipped all the way to Australia.
Each tile is white or cream colored and they're arranged in a pattern called chevrons that looks like arrows pointing up.
The tiles make the opera house sparkle and shine, especially when the sun hits them.
The project had many problems.
It cost much more money than anyone expected.
The budget kept growing and growing.
It was supposed to cost $7 million, but ended up costing $102 million.
That's more than 14 times the original estimate.
The government wasn't happy about all the extra money being spent.
Sadly, Utzon had disagreements with the government about the building.
In 1966, he resigned from the project.
This means he quit before the building was finished.
Utzon left Australia and never saw his completed building in person.
An Australian team of architects, led by Peter Hall, finished the work on the interior.
This was heartbreaking for Utzon, but he stayed involved by sending ideas and designs from Denmark.
Finally, on October 20, 1973, the Sydney Opera House officially opened.
Queen Elizabeth II came from England to open it.
Fireworks lit up the sky.
People celebrated all over Australia.
It had taken 16 years from the time Utzon won the competition until the building opened.
The Sydney Opera House isn't just one big room.
It's actually several different performance spaces inside.
There's a concert hall for orchestras.
There's an opera theater for operas and ballet.
There are drama theaters for plays.
There's a playhouse, a studio, and other smaller spaces.
More than 1,500 performances happen there every year.
That means there's something happening almost every single day.
The concert hall is the largest room inside.
It can hold 2,679 people.
The room has beautiful curved walls and a ceiling made of birch wood.
Special panels on the walls and ceiling are shaped to make the sound perfect.
When musicians play in the concert hall, everyone in the audience can hear them clearly, no matter where they're sitting.
The opera house covers about 4.4 acres of land.
It's 600 feet long and 394 feet wide at its widest point.
The tallest shell reaches 220 feet high.
That's about as tall as a 20-story building.
Even though the shells look light and delicate, they're very strong.
The whole building weighs about 161,000 tons.
In 2007, something special happened.
UNESCO added the Sydney Opera House to its World Heritage List.
This is a list of the most important places in the world that should be protected forever.
The Sydney Opera House was the youngest building ever to be added to this list.
Usually, buildings have to be very old to be considered World Heritage sites, but the Opera House was so important and so beautiful that it was added when it was only 34 years old.
More than 8 million people visit the Sydney Opera House every year.
Some come to see concerts, operas, or plays.
Others just come to look at the building and take pictures.
It's one of the most photographed buildings in the world.
People love how it looks from every angle.
From the harbor, it looks like sails on a ship.
From the side, it looks like sea shells.
From above, it looks like flower petals opening up.
The Sydney Opera House appears on postcards, stamps, and souvenirs.
It's become a symbol of Australia, just like the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of America or the Eiffel Tower is a symbol of France.
When people think of Australia, they often picture the Opera House.
Utsun never returned to see his building in person, but he stayed connected to it.
In 2003, 30 years after the opera house opened, a special room inside was named after him.
It's called the Utsun Room.
Finally, the building honored its creator.
Utzon died in 2008 at the age of 90.
When the Sydney Opera House was added to the World Heritage List, he said it was his gift to the city of Sydney.
Today, the Sydney Opera House continues to amaze people.
At night, it's lit up with colored lights.
Sometimes pictures and designs are projected onto the white shells, turning the building into a giant screen.
The Opera House has become more than just a place for concerts and plays.
It's a gathering place where people come together to celebrate art, music, and creativity.
The story of the Sydney Opera House teaches us important lessons.
It shows us that new ideas can change the world.
Utzon's design was so different that some people thought it couldn't be built.
But he didn't give up on his vision.
It shows us that great things take time.
The building took 14 years to construct. but the result was worth the wait.
It reminds us that beauty and art matter.
The Opera House isn't just functional.
It's a work of art that brings joy to millions of people.
The next time you see a picture of the Sydney Opera House, remember the story behind those beautiful white shells.
Think about Utzon drawing his designs in Denmark.
Think about the workers solving impossible problems to build something that had never been built before.
Think about all the people who have sat inside those concert halls listening to beautiful music.
The Sydney Opera House proves that when we dare to imagine something extraordinary and work hard to make it real, we can create something that inspires the whole world.
Just like those sail-shaped shells reaching toward the sky, your dreams can soar too, if you believe in them and never give up.
