Elgin & Winter Garden Theatre Centre

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Lonely Planet review

A restored masterpiece, the Elgin & Winter Garden is the world's last operating double-decker theatre. Built in 1913, the stunning Winter Garden was built as the flagship for a vaudeville chain that never really took off, while the downstairs Elgin theatre was converted into a movie house in the 1920s.

The Ontario Heritage Foundation saved both theatres from demolition in 1981. During its around C$29 -million restoration effort, bread dough was used to uncover original rose-garden frescoes, the Belgian company that made the original carpeting was contacted for fresh rugs, and the beautiful foliage hanging from the Winter Garden ceiling was replaced, leaf by painstaking leaf. Seats were trucked in from Chicago's infamous Biograph Theatre. Public tours run by passionate volunteers are worth every cent.