Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 20/06/2026 18:27:00

First opened on 24 April 1925 on the site of Nottingham's former House of Correction, the Palais de Danse began life as one of the finest dance halls outside London. It stood on Lower Parliament Street, its entrance crowned by an ornate globe and a carved frieze of dancers that survive on the building to this day. The venue was built for the Midland Palais de Danse Company to designs by architects Alfred John Thraves and Henry Hardwick Dawson, who had made their names on cinemas across the region. The main floor could hold around a thousand dancers, with a resident house band, the Syd Reubens Savannahs, and afternoon tea dances that drew the city's well-to-do. For decades the Palais was the centre of glamour in Nottingham, hosting orchestras, balls and live radio broadcasts. A balcony with red velvet curtains let onlookers watch the floor, and the formal evenings of its early years gradually gave way to more relaxed dances through the 1950s and 60s. From the late 1980s the building reinvented itself as a nightclub, best remembered by a generation of clubbers as Ritzy and later as Oceana and Pryzm. It became a regular stop for coach parties and stag and hen nights, and famously featured on the late-night television show The Hitman and Her. Owned in turn by the Deltic Group and its successor Rekom UK, the venue closed in February 2024 when the operator went into administration, briefly leaving one of the city's longest-running nightlife landmarks dark after almost a century of trading. Later in 2024 it was bought by Nottingham-based DHP Family, the independent music company behind venues such as Rock City, who restored the original Palais name and reopened the space that September with decade-themed rooms and a promise of more live bands alongside club nights. Marking its centenary in 2025, the Palais now operates as a combined nightclub and events space, trading on a heritage that links 1920s tea dances, big-band ballroom evenings and modern club culture under one distinctive globe-topped roof.