Naturally in fashionable 18th century Bath, you needed somewhere where you could go and be seen at balls and concerts, dressed in your finest clothes, showing off the latest fashions.  In addition to the elegant Georgian crescents and terraces being built, somewhere to hold such events was essential and in 1771, with the most spectacular grand ball, the splendid new neo-classical Assembly Rooms were opened.  Designed by John Wood the Younger, the main room could accommodate 800 people underneath its spectacular crystal chandeliers.   Very popular, the centre of fashionable society in Bath, Jane Austin and Charles Dickens were among the notable visitors to events at the Assembly Rooms.

The elegant rooms are still there, performing similar functions in the 21st century, and it is highly appropriate that in the basement is a Museum celebrating Fashion, showing the latest trends in clothes from Elizabethan times to the 21st century, including many dresses and gentlemen’s outfits that may well have been worn upstairs in the 18th century, plus a special exhibition of royal dresses.