A SHORT HISTORY
OF THE PALAIS GARNIER

IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF HÔTEL GRAMONT

THE PARIS OPERA

The imposing Palais Garnier takes us back to the time of Napoleon III and the great transformations of Haussmann’s Paris. Wishing to give the capital a new opera house, the Emperor launched a major international competition in 1860, attracting 171 architects. To everyone’s surprise, the winner in 1861 was Charles Garnier, then only 35 years old and still relatively unknown.

Construction began in 1862 and quickly grew into a project of immense scale. Masons, stonemasons, carpenters, sculptors, painters and decorators worked for years to create this vast building of stone, marble and gold. As early as 1867, although the work was still unfinished, the façade was unveiled to the public and had already become a Parisian attraction.

But history disrupted the construction. The war of 1870 and the siege of Paris brought the work to a halt: the still unfinished building was requisitioned and used first as a hospital and then as a military supply depot. After the fall of Napoleon III, Garnier even had to remove certain imperial symbols from his work. In 1871, the building was occupied during the Paris Commune before construction finally resumed in earnest.

Begun under the Empire, the new Opera House was ultimately inaugurated under the Third Republic on 5 January 1875, in the presence of President MacMahon. Both functional and flamboyant, this architectural masterpiece quickly became a reference for the Italian-style theatre and remains today one of Paris’s most iconic monuments.

SOME POINTS OF REFERENCE

CHARLES
GARNIER

In 1861, Charles Garnier won the anonymous competition to design a new opera house in Paris. He was just 35 years old, still relatively unknown to the general public, and had never before led a project on such a scale.

He would devote 14 years of his life to this immense undertaking. Nearly 2,000 workers took part in the construction, which required an extraordinary profusion of marble, gilding, sculpture and painting. Garnier conceived everything: the monumentality of the façade, the vast staircase, the foyers, the circulation spaces and even the smallest decorative details.

When the Opera House opened in 1875, it impressed as much by its scale as by the richness of its decoration. A true Gesamtkunstwerk, it secured Charles Garnier’s place in history and became one of the few major Parisian monuments to bear the name of its architect.

AVENUE
DE L’OPÉRA

To provide a more direct route from his residence at the Tuileries to the new Opera House, Napoleon III asked Prefect Haussmann to cut a grand avenue through the heart of Paris. The future avenue de l’Opéra offers a majestic perspective towards Charles Garnier’s building and accompanies the transformation of the capital.

Opera Garnier by night close to Hotel Gramont

The project was immense: a broad thoroughfare had to be opened through a dense and ancient urban fabric, requiring the demolition of numerous buildings and the reshaping of an entire neighbourhood. The avenue became one of the great arteries of Haussmann’s Paris, conceived as much for circulation as for staging the city itself.

Charles Garnier, delighted by such a beautiful perspective on his monument, asked for just one thing: that no trees be planted along the avenue, so that nothing could hide the Opera House façade or interrupt the view for passers-by.

OPÉRA
DISTRICT

The Palais Garnier lies at the heart of the vast transformation of Paris initiated by Napoleon III and carried out by Baron Haussmann. The aim was not simply to build a new theatre: the Opera was intended to become one of the major landmarks of the modern capital, around which an entire district would take shape.

Wide avenues were cut through the city to connect the monument with the Tuileries, the Louvre, the Grands Boulevards and the principal centres of power. These monumental perspectives reflected a new ambition: to make Paris more fluid and easier to navigate, but also more spectacular, with architecture playing a central role in the staging of the capital.

The chosen location was highly strategic. Close to the Bourse and the Grands Boulevards, the Opera stood at the heart of the Paris of business, banking, commerce and the rapidly expanding department stores. Around it gathered theatres, cafés, restaurants, hotels and places of entertainment.

The district thus became one of the great settings of Second Empire Paris: a place to work, to see and be seen, to go out and to experience this new Parisian way of life — social, lively and resolutely modern.

AN UNDERGROUND LAKE

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

In the mid-19th century, the Opéra district still bore the traces of former marshland. Beneath the streets newly opened by Haussmann, the ground remained saturated with water. In 1862, while excavating the foundations, Charles Garnier discovered a water table less than eight metres below ground that repeatedly flooded the construction site and proved impossible to drain completely.

Rather than fighting endlessly against the water, Garnier decided to incorporate it into his design. Beneath the building, he had a vast watertight masonry reservoir constructed to collect and contain the seepage. This permanent basin helped control the water pressure and contributed to the stability of the building.

This is how the famous underground “lake” of the Opera was born. Invisible to audiences but very real, this mysterious reservoir would leave a lasting mark on the collective imagination. Gaston Leroux drew on it in 1910 for The Phantom of the Opera, giving rise to one of the great legends associated with the Palais Garnier, later adapted for the stage, cinema and musical theatre.

DISCOVER OUR PAGE ABOUT THE PALAIS GARNIER DISTRICT

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PALAIS GARNIER

THE PARIS OPERA

SOME POINTS OF REFERENCE

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

A SHORT HISTORY
OF THE PALAIS GARNIER