Thalia Theater

This guide to the Thalia Theater in Hamburg opens in 1843, when Hamburg's senate granted Cheri Maurice a theater license on one condition, no serious drama, and he sidestepped it by naming his new stage after Thalia, the muse of comedy. It follows the theater's growth into one of Germany's most acclaimed dramatic stages, its move in 1912 to a temple-fronted hall adorned with muse reliefs and figures of Apollo and Thalia, and the bombing that gutted it in 1945. A year later, actors reopened the ruined building anyway, staging Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night amid the rubble.