This year I decided to volunteer an afternoon on the Saturday of the Doors Open Toronto event at The Royal Conservatory located at Bloor Street West and Avenue Road.
It’s a building I often walk by and sometimes have had coffee in their cafe located in the Philosopher’s Walk entrance to the building. It’s a beautiful building blending the heritage building with a modern one.
View of the espresso bar and exit to the Philospher’s Walk
Mazzoleni Concert Hall
We were shown the available spaces that would be of interest to the public entering the building. The first was the Mazzoleni Concert Hall. It originally was used as a chapel and subsequently a lecture hall for the University of Toronto. It was then restored in 1996 and began being used a concert hall.
Part of the modern building incorporated some of the roof and a dormitory window of the heritage building into its fourth floor. This was really cool as we were able to physically touch the roof and structure of the heritage building. The fourth floor also had really neat views of the mixture of the old and new buildings.
The Piano Tech Lab in the basement of the building was also interesting. There was a piano under restoration in the lab so we got to see the inner workings of the piano.
Among the above things we got to see, there was also antique musical instruments on display throughout the ground and first floor.
