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400 years since the original Shakespeare's Globe burnt down

REBUILT: It's 400 years since the original Globe Theatre burnt down.

Today marks the 400th anniversary of the Globe Theatre in London being destroyed by fire.

The original theatre - built and owned by Shakespeare's company of players - burnt down on June 19, 1613.

On that day, the threatre was showing a new, a collaborative effort by Shakespeare and his junior colleague John Fletcher: Henry VIII, or to call it by its original title, All is True. In the play, cannons are shot off in celebration, which accidently caught the thatch on fire.

HENRY VIII: The original Globe burnt down during a showing of Henry VIII, pictured above. Credit: British Library/PA Wire

The threatre burnt to the ground in about an hour.

A second Globe was built in June 1614, but Shakespeare probably never saw the new one and he would not write for it, dying around the same time that it was reconstructed.

Today's Shakespeare's Globe, the modern reconstruction, opened in 1997.