Place #3: The Empire Theatre

A final activity of January 16th was going to the Empire Theatre to see Sherlock Holmes.  Alex loves Sherlock Holmes movies, so we decided to go see it in central London, though it's more expensive than in other parts of London.  When I first looked it up in the morning before leaving, I tried to find a movie theater (or cinema, as they call it here) that looked old because I wanted the "old European cinema" experience, so I found the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square.

When we went inside, it was huge and it looked like new.  It was a mix of a classic design with modern screen and lighting.  I later found out that this was the movie theater they used for the Sherlock Holmes premiere here in London, which is not surprising after being there.  It turns out that this is one of the movie theaters they use for premieres, and its location in Leicester Square makes it perfect for that sort of thing.  This is only a block away form the M&M store and the W hotel.  It's an area where there are lots of restaurants and stores as well, so you can call it the "heart" of tourism in London.  It is always insanely crowded at all times of the year and now that they are fixing places here and there for the Olympics, Leicester Square is surrounded by walls that reduce the walking space significantly and make it difficult to move around among all the tourists and people like me that stop every five seconds to take a picture of anything and everything.

The Empire Theatre opened during a time that tourism was almost nonexistent in the 1884.  It was used for musicals and later for ballet before it was bought by MGM.  They demolished it in 1927 and made it into a cinema.  In the early 1960s it was refurbished and in 2009 new screening rooms were built making more like the movie theater that exists today.  For a while in the 1990s they had a light and music show before the movie started that was quite popular.

You can read all about the Empire Theatre's history on Wikipedia if you like random facts and are not planning to write a full-referenced essay on it or you can go to the Empire Cinema's website.

Another interesting fact is that one of the screening rooms sits 1,330 people, it has a stadium-like design and lots of leg room, which I loved!  The are also currently installing the UK's largest movie theater screen, so the Empire Theater is certainly worth visiting if you don't mind paying a couple of extra pounds.