Shakespeare's Globe Exhibition

The first Globe was built in Southwark in 1599. The Globe was at the heart of Shakespeare's London, the Elizabethan equivalent of Shaftesbury Avenue or Broadway and the main theatrical entertainment ('red light') district of London. Unfortunately, the theatre was burnt down in 1613 when a prop cannon shot an ember into the thatched roof during a performance of Henry VIII. 

Now, nearly 400 years later, Shakespeare's Globe is a reconstruction of the original Southwark theatre. The Shakespeare Globe Centre is an educational, cultural and entertainment centre which includes a museum under the theatre, research facilities and an exhibition of Elizabethan London. 

Shakespeare's Globe Trust is dedicated to the experience and international understanding of Shakespeare in performance. Uniquely its work celebrates the fact that the greatest dramatic poet in the English language lived and worked in London and that the cradle of English theatre was on Bankside by the River Thames.

In 1996, Shakespeare's Globe was voted the best attraction in Europe and it was awarded the European Tourism Initiative Golden Star Award by the European Federation of Associations of Tourism Journalists.