✓ The Sydney Morning HeraldCulture & Curiosity

Historic Sydney cinema from 1911 reopens as luxury hotel

Paddington's 25Hours Hotel occupies a 1911 cinema building that showed talking films when that was rare. The Olympia sat empty for decades before architects redesigned it as a hotel.

Why it mattersIt shows how forgotten historic buildings can be brought back to life while honouring their past, rather than being demolished.