This idea is from London WeekendNotes for Tuesday the 20th of April 2010. For more recent ideas subscribe here.

Shakespeare's Globe on Bankside is a well-known tourist destination and required stop for Shakespeare lovers. But it is less well known that 180 metres from Shakespeare's Globe is the site of the original Globe Theatre, where fifteen of Shakespeare's plays were performed for the first time four hundred years ago.

To get there from Shakespeare's Globe, continue down Bankside past Southwark Bridge Road and take a right on Bank End. (If you get to the Golden Hind pub, you've gone too far—turn right and head south.) Take another right on Park Street and follow it until you're nearly back to Southwark Bridge Road. The Globe site will be on your left in a car park between two blocks of flats. Look for a gate with four panels giving the history of the Globe Theatre and a stone wall with a plaque honoring Shakespeare.

The Globe Theatre was originally built in 1599. Shakespeare's company needed a new theatre after they were unable to renew the lease terms on the land their old theatre in Shoreditch—imaginatively named The Theatre—was built on, so they dismantled the old theatre, hauled the timbers off to the new site in Southwark, and put it back together.

The Globe Theatre could hold an audience of 3000: 2000 in the three galleries, and an additional 1000 "groundlings," who paid just one penny to stand in the open-air courtyard in the middle of the almost round, thatched-roof theatre. It was constructed of oak and plaster with pillars painted to look like marble and had a covered stage thrust into the middle of the courtyard. The canopy above the stage—where sound effects for thunder were produced and actors playing gods were sometimes lowered with ropes onto the stage—was called the "heavens", while the space below the stage, accessible by trapdoors, was called "hell".

On 29 June, 1613 during a performance of Shakespeare's Henry VIII, a cannon used as part of the king's ceremonial entrance misfired and lit fire to the thatched roof. The Globe burnt to the ground. No one was hurt except for one man whose trousers caught fire, but he was able to douse the flames with a bottle of ale. But though the Globe was rebuilt the following year—with a tiled roof—Shakespeare seems to have taken the destruction of his theatre as an opportunity to retire. He wrote no more plays after that.

The reconstructed Globe continued to be used until the Puritan administration shut down all the playhouses during the beginning of the Civil War in 1642. Two years later, unable to be used, it was pulled down.

In 1989, excavation began on the site where the original Globe was believed to be. Only about five percent of the original foundations were uncovered; the rest lie beneath the Anchor Terrace, a landmarked nineteenth century building, and so cannot be excavated. The site was covered over again to protect what was found, and red bricks were used to outline the pieces of foundation that were uncovered.

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