Paris Opera House- Opéra National de Paris

Opéra National de Paris
OPERA NATIONAL DE PARIS 120 RUE DE LYON 75 576 PARIS CEDEX 12 0 892 89 90 90

Great 'virtual visit' --click here

The Palais Garnier is the thirteenth theatre to house the Paris Opera since the Opera was founded by Louis XIV in 1669. The current Opera House was built on the orders of Napoleon III. The project for an opera house was put out to competition and was won by Charles Garnier, an unknown 35-year-old architect. The construction lasted fifteen years, from 1860 to 1875, and was interrupted by numerous incidents, including the 1870 war, the fall of the Empire and the Commune.

The Palais Garnier was inaugurated on 15 January 1875 and it is one fine building ! The Grand Staircase is one of the most famous features of the Palais Garnier. It is built of various colours of marble with a double stairway which leads to the foyers and the different levels of the auditorium. The many vast and richly decorated foyers provide the audience with areas to stroll through during intermissions.

The auditorium is lit by an immense crystal chandelier hanging below Marc Chagall’s brightly coloured painted ceiling. The Italian-style horseshoe-shaped auditorium has 1,900 red velvet seats.

Just about all the floors are mosaics. The amazing thing, besides the vast scale is the fact that within each floor's pattern, if you take time to notice, there is an almost infinite amount of variation of the details. Instead of repeating the same stylized flower over and over, the floor might have hundreds of variations of a flower, or a rosette, all about the same size, but each one different.

If you ever visit and are told that the main auditorium is closed due to rehursals, do not let that deter you from paying the admission to see the other parts. The acutal auditorium seems small compared to the vastness of the overall building.