The Sydney Opera House was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2007. UNESCO has described it as "a great architectural work of the 20th century."
The famous building, with its soaring sail-like roof, is often used to refer to the city of Sydney, Australia, and even the Australian continent, and is on par with the Pyramids of Egypt, and the Great Wall of China.
It was supposed to be a moment that would have deeply moved Jørn Utzon (1918-2008), the brilliant and poetic architect of the Sydney Opera House. The extremely special aura of the Sydney Opera House is now beyond doubt, but in 1973, when it was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II, the stunning building was the subject of great controversy.
Today, among the 1.2 million people who buy tickets to Sydney Opera House shows each year and the 7 million people from around the world who travel to Sydney's Cape Bairn to pay tribute to this architectural marvel, few would have imagined that the visionary architect had been rejected by the government that appointed him to design the building.
The story is a sad one, but with the splendor of the Sydney Opera House, it is necessary to look back.
Things got off to a happy start in 1957 when Utzon's design won the top prize out of 233 entries in an international design competition run by the New South Wales government to select a designer for an opera house on the site of a tram depot facing Sydney Harbour.
At the end of the 20th century, at the invitation of the Sydney Opera House Trust, Utzon provided a spirited new design for his architectural masterpiece on the waterfront of his home island of Majorca, in order to improve, among other things, the lobby of the Sydney Opera House.
Now, Utzon's stunning building looks better than ever. We have had the pleasure of crossing its marvelous roof, where undulating creamy Swedish tiles gleam and adorn the reinforced concrete roof shell, each with a different geometric shape and ingenuity.
