National Concert Hall

The National Concert Hall is a concert hall located on Earlsfort Terrace in Dublin, close to St. Stephen’s Green, and is the principal national venue for classical music concerts in Ireland. Originally built for the Dublin International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures of 1865, the structure was converted into the central building of University College Dublin at the foundation of the National University of Ireland in 1908. When University College Dublin began to relocate to a new campus at Belfield in the 1960s, part of the building was converted, and reopened as the National Concert Hall in 1981. Since then, the structure has been shared with University College Dublin. In 2005 it was announced that University College Dublin is to relocate all of its faculties to Belfield in the near term, allowing the National Concert Hall to develop a major expansion plan on the entire site, bringing it in line with international peers. Today the National Concert Hall is one of Ireland’s National Cultural Institutions, under the aegis of the Irish Government’s Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism and, as such, is grant-aided by the Irish Government. The National Concert Hall is a statutory corporate body, with a management team, and a Government-appointed Board. In 2011, the National Concert Hall celebrated its 30th Anniversary.