Palais Garnier
At the Place de l’Opéra, the Palais Garnier—also called the Opéra Garnier—was built for the Paris Opera from 1861 to 1875 on the order of Emperor Napoleon III, and it quickly earned a second name: “Palais Garnier,” in acknowledgment of its exceptional opulence and the plans of architect Charles Garnier. It is a 1,979-seat opera house, and for decades it was the main stage of the Paris Opera and its associated ballet company—until 1989, when the opening of Opéra Bastille shifted the opera’s center of gravity. Even its scale reads like Second Empire ambition: the stage flytower rises to 56 metres, and the façade reaches 32 metres to its top. The building has been protected as a French monument historique since 1923. Its fame has also been cultural: Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera, and later adaptations—including the 1986 musical—made this auditorium a global shorthand for spectacle.
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