Vigadó Concert Hall

This guide to the Vigadó Concert Hall in Budapest opens with a flying machine wheeled onto the ballroom floor in 1909, when Louis Bleriot, fresh off the first flight across the English Channel, brought his aircraft here at the Hungarian Aero Club's invitation. It reaches back to the hall's earlier life as the Redoute, opened in 1833, where Franz Liszt once played benefit concerts, and to the 1849 shelling that burned it down and the grander hall architect Frigyes Feszl raised in its place, its facade thick with folk motifs and frescoes by Karoly Lotz. Best heard standing at the center of the restored Great Hall floor.