Saenger Theatre

The Saenger Theatre opened on February 4, 1927, on Canal Street after a three-year, $2.5-million construction effort that prompted thousands to parade through downtown at its debut. Designed in an atmospheric style meant to evoke an Italian Renaissance courtyard, the auditorium ceiling is painted as a night sky with twinkling stars and drifting clouds -- a theatrical illusion that still draws gasps nearly a century later. The theater survived a sale to Paramount-Publix just two years after opening, decades as a movie palace, and severe Hurricane Katrina flooding in 2005. A painstaking restoration returned the Saenger to operation in 2013 with a capacity of approximately 2,600 seats, and it now hosts Broadway touring productions, major concert tours, and comedy acts as one of the premier performance spaces in the Gulf South.