The City Rooms, Leicester

The City Rooms is a Georgian building, completed in 1800. It would have become Leicester's first hotel but was not completed and the building was sold in 1799 with £3,300 still needed to complete it, and opened as the Leicester Assembly Rooms in 1800 and used for the first time on 17 September to house the visitors to the Leicester Races held at Victoria Park, with the ground floor being used as a coffee house and the upper floors for wedding receptions, banquets and balls.

In 1817 it was adapted to become the Judges Lodgings when it passed into the hands of the County Justices, then becoming known as the County Rooms. When it passed into the ownership of Leicester City Council it was renamed again, to The City Rooms. The ballroom which runs the whole width of the building on the first floor is the centerpiece. Decorated with paintings by Ramsay Richard Reinagle and figures in niches on the front of the building by John Charles Felix Rossi, representing the comic and lyric muses. The building has been designated by English Heritage as a grade I listed building.