How To Unlock the Opera House in Cities: Skylines

Front view of the Opera House in Cities: Skylines
Opera House
Cost to Build ₡135,000
Upkeep ₡1,600/week
Tourism Value 100
Entertainment Value 120
Noise Pollution 40

The Opera House is a Level 4 unique building in Cities: Skylines. To unlock it, you’ll need to extract 3,000 units of natural resources, and you’ll need to reach the Busy Town population milestone.

You can extract these natural resources either with specialized industry districts (base game), or with industry area extractor buildings (Industries DLC).

Method 1: Specialized Industry Districts (no DLC)

To create specialized industry in the base game, you’ll need to create a district over your generic industry zones (orange zoning) and then apply a specialization to it.

First, determine the location and types of resources on your map using the natural resources info view.

The resource types are fertile land (for farming), forestry, ore, and oil.

The Natural Resources info view. / Cities: Skylines
The Natural Resources info view.

Once you’ve picked the location of the resources you want to extract, create a district over it using the Paint District tool.

The Paint District tool from the Districts and Areas menu. / Cities: Skylines
The Paint District tool from the Districts and Areas menu.

Next, go to the Industrial Specializations tab of the Districts and Areas menu. Select the specialization that corresponds to the natural resources your district is on.

Click on the district you created to assign that specialization to it.

We’re going to assign the farming specialization to this district. / Cities: Skylines
We’re going to assign the farming specialization to this district.

Build the necessary road, power, and water connections to the area, then begin zoning industry (orange zoning) on it.

The industry buildings that will grow within this district will be specialized industry, which will extract natural resources from the land.

These zoned farming industry buildings will extract resources from the land. / Cities: Skylines
These zoned farming industry buildings will extract resources from the land.

Method 2: Industry Areas (Industries DLC)

Compared to the first method, using the extractor buildings from the Industries DLC has far greater costs upfront. So do this only if you actually want to have a specialized industry area anyway (they do tend to pay off in the long run).

Just like in method 1, start out by determining the location and type of natural resources you want to extract.

Instead of painting a district, create an industry area using the Paint Industry Area tool (also from the District and Areas menu).

The Paint Industry Area tool. / Cities: Skylines
The Paint Industry Area tool.

Build the main building for the industry area type that corresponds to the natural resources there.

Building Build Cost (₡)
Farm Main Building 15,000
Forestry Main Building 20,000
Ore Industry Main Building 25,000
Oil Industry Main Building 30,000
Main buildings are always the first buildings listed in each of the industry area tabs. / Cities: Skylines
Main buildings are always the first buildings listed in each of the industry area tabs.

With your main building in place, you can now start placing your extractor buildings.

Click on the single gear icon to show the extractor buildings for your industry area. / Cities: Skylines
Click on the single gear icon to show the extractor buildings for your industry area.

These are the extractor buildings available to you at the starting level of your industry area:

Industry Type Building Cost (₡)
Farming Small Crop Field 4,000
Farming Small Fruit Field 4,000
Forestry Small Tree Plantation 4,000
Ore Small Ore Mine 6,500
Oil Small Oil Pump 8,000

Whichever of the two methods you use, once you have the specialized buildings in place, it won’t be long before they extract the necessary 3,000 units of resources.

You can then build the opera house from the Level 4 tab of the Unique Buildings menu, for ₡135,000.

The opera house in the build menu. / Cities: Skylines
The opera house in the build menu.

The opera house provides 120 entertainment points, and is a requirement for the Space Elevator monument.

Liz Villegas

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Liz is a writer and photographer with a love for building and strategy games. Her spare time is often split between lifting, reading, drawing, annoying her dog Mr. Porky Butt, and squinting at stat tables on the wiki pages of whatever game she's currently playing.

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