Espace Culturel du Pin Galant

Charles Aznavour sang at the opening on 20 January 1989, and the hall that Mérignac built for itself on the western edge of Bordeaux has kept that breadth of programme ever since. The auditorium holds 1,402; a separate pavilion of some 1,300 square metres takes anything from two hundred to fourteen hundred people in whatever arrangement is wanted. A season runs to around eighty productions and a hundred performances, symphonic and operatic music sharing the calendar with classical and contemporary dance, drama and variety. Philippe Prost has directed the house since 2015. For a commune of seventy thousand people it is an unusual thing to have, and the region knows it.