Birmingham Hippodrome: Getting There, and Where to Stay in Southside

The Birmingham Hippodrome is the busiest single theatre in the United Kingdom by attendance, which is not a claim most people expect of a regional house. It seats roughly 1,935, draws more than 600,000 visitors a year, and is also the busiest venue for dance to be found anywhere outside London.

Its position does a great deal of the work. The theatre stands on Hurst Street in Southside, about eight minutes on foot from New Street, with the Chinese Quarter and the Arcadian courtyard immediately behind it.

An evening here needs no transport at either end of it, which is rare in any city.

Walk south from New Street and you are there in under ten minutes, passing the Bull Ring markets on the way. Moor Street is a comparable distance and a slightly quieter route. Neither journey involves a bus, and both are level enough to manage without any difficulty at all in ordinary weather.

Driving to a performance is the option worth thinking twice about. Hurst Street lies well inside the A4540 Middleway, so the whole approach falls within the Clean Air Zone, and a non-compliant vehicle pays ten pounds a day on top of whatever the parking itself ends up costing you on the night.

A matinee changes the plan only slightly. Daytime trains into New Street run often, the level walk down past the markets takes the same few minutes, and lunch in the Chinese Quarter fits comfortably before the curtain. Families bringing children to a Birmingham Royal Ballet performance often find the train and that short walk easier than parking.

Southside is the obvious answer, putting the auditorium a few minutes from the door and the restaurants closer still. The wider city centre sits within about a fifteen-minute walk, so the practical choice is really about how lively you want the street outside your own window to be once it is all over.

Broad Street and Brindleyplace are the busier alternative and add perhaps ten minutes to the walk.

The Jewellery Quarter is quieter again but takes twenty, which turns a late finish into a longer stroll than some people want at that hour, having spent three hours already in a theatre seat.

The concentration of restaurants behind the theatre shapes how the whole area runs.

Kitchens in the Chinese Quarter and around the Arcadian are used to turning a table before curtain-up, and pre-theatre menus here are timed tightly and not offered as an afterthought to the rest of the evening's arrangements.

That makes booking straightforward as long as you say what time you need to leave. The courtyard stays busy long after the performance ends too, so a drink afterwards does not mean walking back into the centre in search of somewhere that happens to still be serving at that hour.

The Hippodrome has step-free access and accessible seating, and it is among the easier venues in Birmingham to reach without stairs from the station.

Because provision differs by performance and seating area, those seats are best booked directly with the theatre itself and not through any kind of resale platform.