The Hub, Edinburgh

The Hub, at the top of Edinburgh's Royal Mile, is a multi-functional building comprising a performance space and venues for functions, conferences and weddings. It is also the home of the Edinburgh International Festival and is the central ticketing office, main information centre and a performance venue for the festival, and a central source of information on all the Edinburgh Festivals. It's gothic spire - the highest point in central Edinburgh - towers over the surrounding buildings below the castle. The building design was the result of a collaboration between Edinburgh architect J Gillespie Graham and the famous gothic revivalist Augustus Pugin. It was constructed between 1842 and 1845.The inside houses the Hub Cafe; Hub Tickets, the central box office for the International Festival, which also sells tickets for a wide range of other events; a Main Hall with a capacity of 420, used as a venue for concerts, banquets, events, conferences; and two smaller venues, the Glass Room and the Dunard Library, suitable for smaller events.Prior to the completion of the new Scottish Parliament Building at Holyrood in 2004, the Hub was occasionally used for meetings of the Scottish Parliament when the Church of Scotland's General Assembly Hall was unavailable. The Parliament returned to the Hub for two weeks following the collapse of a beam in its debating chamber on 2 March 2006.