The Teatro Ariston is Sanremo's main theatre and cinema, and has been the permanent home of the Sanremo Music Festival since 1977. For five nights each February it becomes the most-watched stage in Italy, broadcast live on RAI 1 to audiences of ten million or more. The rest of the year it functions as a regular cinema and concert venue.
The building is on Corso Matteotti, the main shopping street, and looks more like a grand cinema than a traditional opera house. The foyer is worth a peek for its photographs and memorabilia from past festivals — decades of Italian pop history pinned to the walls. If you are in Sanremo during the festival itself (usually the first week of February), tickets are expensive and hard to get, but the atmosphere in the surrounding streets is worth being there for regardless.