Facts About the Sydney Opera House

The Opera House consists of a thousand rooms including seven performance areas, five restaurants and a recording studio.

The design of the building was chosen by way of an international competition which received 233 entries from 32 countries.

Sydney Opera House is the most visited landmark in the Southern Hemisphere and was declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 2007.

The main Concert Hall boats the world's largest mechanical tracker action organ which has over 10,000 pipes.

The building's 1,056,006 glossy white and matte cream roof tiles were made in Sweden. The tiles are self-cleaning but require occasional maintenance.

The roof consists of 2194 pre-cast concrete sections which are held together with 350 km of tensioned steel cable.

As part of a sound and light festival the buildings roof was illuminated with 300 paintings by Brian Eno in May and June 2009.

In 1957 it was estimated that construction would cost AUS$7 million - in 1973 when the building was completed over $102 million had been spent.

Jorn Utzon was sacked in 1966, 7 years before completion of the building. He left Australia and never returned despite doing new work relating to the building in the late 1990s.

Without the architect's involvement changes were made such that the Opera was performed with some musicians situated as much as 12 metres below the level of the stage.

The building's power supply is similar in size to that of a small town and power is distributed by over 400 miles of cable.

The building was constructed on the site of the The Bennelong Point Tram Depot - a process which took 14 years.