The Wales Millennium Centre facing Cardiff Bay will be officially opened this Sunday by the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles. The £106m performing arts centre is the first to be built in Wales for more than 50 years and is the UK’s final lottery-funded Millennium Project. The design by local architect Percy Thomas Partnership, now Capital Percy Thomas, had a painful birth in 1998 as it replaced Zaha Hadid’s more radical competition-winning scheme. The finished building is a sculptural steel form, out of which are cut the words “In these stones horizons sing” in English and Welsh. It was built by Sir Robert McAlpine, with Arup as structural and services engineer and Carr & Angier as theatre consultant.