Theatre · Opéra · 9e arrondissement

Palais Garnier

The buildingStill standing

Getting inHours or admission

What's there nowStill the same

Still the Opéra national de Paris's historic house. It plays opera, ballet and concerts through the season and opens to visitors by ticket the rest of the time; online booking is compulsory.

The Paris opera house — Charles Garnier's Second Empire palace on the place de l'Opéra, inaugurated on 5 January 1875 and the home of the Paris Opera ever since.

Address: Place de l'Opéra, 75009 Paris
Years: 1875–present

The place, briefly

The building began with an assassination attempt. On 14 January 1858 an attempt was made on the lives of Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie in front of the Salle Le Peletier, the hall the Paris Opera had used since 1821. A new house followed, and in 1860 an international competition was organised to design it. Of 171 projects submitted, the jury chose unanimously the one entered by a thirty-five-year-old, unknown winner of the Grand Prix de Rome: Charles Garnier.

Construction ran fifteen years and was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Then, in 1873, fire destroyed the Le Peletier hall, and the company was left with no house at all until the new one opened. The Palais Garnier was inaugurated on 5 January 1875, under the presidency of Mac Mahon — by which point the Second Empire that commissioned it had fallen. It was made of stone, marble and gold, and by the Opera's own account it was the monument rather than the performances that the public rushed to see. Garnier, who had overseen the work for thirteen years, was obliged to pay 120 francs for his box in the second circle.

By the Belle Époque the Palais Garnier was, in the Opera's phrase, one of the major meeting and entertaining places of Paris — a building people went to in order to be seen in it. This is the house an English visitor of the period meant by "the Grand Opera", and it is almost certainly where Agatha Christie sat when her mother took her to the opera during her Paris finishing-school year of 1905–06 — her estate's biography records the visits without naming the building. The house stands a few minutes' walk from the American Express office at Opéra and the Olympia on the boulevard des Capucines. In 1910 Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes premiered three Fokine ballets on its stage; in June 1911 it gave the complete Ring of the Nibelung.

Gaston Leroux set Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (1910) inside this building, which is why a great many people who have never seen an opera can describe its staircase and its cellars. What is actually up there is Marc Chagall's ceiling, painted over the auditorium. The Opera has played here since 1875; the Opéra Bastille was inaugurated on 13 July 1989 for the bicentenary of the Revolution, and in 1990 the two houses were gathered into a single public institution. The Palais Garnier still gives 172 performances a season and takes in over a million visitors a year.

Key facts

Address: Place de l'Opéra, 9th arrondissement — entered at the corner of rue Scribe and rue Auber
Inaugurated: 5 January 1875, under the presidency of Mac Mahon
Architect: Charles Garnier — unknown and thirty-five when the 1860 competition chose him unanimously out of 171 entries
Commissioned by: Napoleon III, after the attempt on his life outside the old opera house in 1858
In fiction: The setting of Gaston Leroux's Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (1910)
Today: Still the Opéra national de Paris's historic house — 172 performances a season, and open to visitors by ticket

Timeline

1858
An assassination attempt on Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie outside the Salle Le Peletier, on 14 January, sets the search for a new opera house going.
1860
An international competition draws 171 projects; the jury unanimously picks the entry of Charles Garnier, thirty-five and unknown.
1870
Building work, already ten years old, is interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War.
1873
Fire destroys the Salle Le Peletier, the company's house since 1821.
1875
The Palais Garnier is inaugurated on 5 January, under the presidency of Mac Mahon.
1905–1906
Agatha Christie, at a Paris finishing school, is taken by her mother to what her estate's biography calls the Grand Opera. It does not name the building; the Paris Opera's house in those years was this one.
1910
Diaghilev's Ballets Russes premiere three Fokine ballets here.
1911
The complete Ring of the Nibelung is given in June.
1989
The Opéra Bastille is inaugurated on 13 July for the bicentenary of the Revolution; the Palais Garnier keeps its season.
1990
A single public institution is created to hold both houses.
Today
172 performances a season and more than a million visitors a year, with guided and self-guided tours between rehearsals.

On the map

Questions before you go

When did the Palais Garnier open?

It was inaugurated on 5 January 1875, under the presidency of Mac Mahon. Building had taken fifteen years, interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and by the time it opened the Second Empire that ordered it no longer existed.

Who designed the Palais Garnier?

Charles Garnier, who was thirty-five and unknown — a winner of the Grand Prix de Rome — when the international competition of 1860 chose his project unanimously from 171 entries. Having overseen thirteen years of construction, he then had to pay 120 francs for his own box in the second circle on opening night.

Why was a new Paris opera house built?

On 14 January 1858 an assassination attempt was made on Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie as they arrived at the Salle Le Peletier, where the Opera had played since 1821. The emperor's project for a new house followed. The Le Peletier hall itself burned down in 1873, two years before the Palais Garnier was ready.

Is the Palais Garnier the opera house in The Phantom of the Opera?

Yes. Gaston Leroux set Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, published in 1910, inside this building — its staircase, its stage machinery and its cellars. Every stage and screen version since has been set in the same house.

Can you visit the Palais Garnier?

Yes. Alongside its season of opera, ballet and concerts, the house opens for self-guided and guided tours, taking in the Grand Staircase, the auditorium under Marc Chagall's ceiling, and the foyers. Online booking is compulsory and rehearsals can close rooms at short notice.

What is the difference between the Palais Garnier and the Opéra Bastille?

They are the two houses of the same company. The Palais Garnier has been the Paris Opera's home since 1875; the Opéra Bastille, a 2,700-seat modern house, was inaugurated on 13 July 1989 for the bicentenary of the Revolution, and in 1990 both were gathered into a single public institution.

Writers who knew this place

Agatha Christie

British · The best-selling novelist in history — around a billion copies in English and a billion in translation — who invented two of the most famous detectives in fiction, the fastidious Belgian Hercule Poirot and the watchful village spinster Miss Marple, and wrote The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the world. Her Paris connection is small and honest: at fifteen her widowed mother took her out of a school in Torquay, the Devon seaside town where she grew up, and put her through a run of Parisian boarding schools, where she was good enough at the piano to have gone professional and too frightened of audiences to try.

Visited by · 1905–1906

Christie's estate documents the outings but not the address. Its official biography, on the year she spent at Paris pensions from the age of fifteen, says that "much more to her tastes were the visits with her mother to the Grand Opera and excursions to Versailles, Fontainebleau and other historic places" — so that she went to the opera in Paris with Clara Miller in 1905–06 is stated directly. Which building is not. The identification rests on two things: "the Grand Opera" was the ordinary English name for the Paris Opera, as distinct from the Opéra-Comique, the city's other opera house; and the Paris Opera's house throughout those years was the Palais Garnier, which the company had occupied since 1875 and would occupy alone until the Opéra Bastille opened in 1989. The Opera's own history of the period describes the Palais Garnier as one of the major meeting and entertaining places of Paris in the Belle Époque, which is exactly the sort of evening the estate is describing. Recorded as probable rather than documented because no source in hand puts Christie inside this building by name.

— About Christie — the official biography, Childhood and Adolescence Overseas; The Paris Opera in the 20th century; The Paris Opera in the 19th century

Within walking distance

Present-day color view of the surviving honey-stone corner building at 11 rue Scribe under a blue sky, with the Nespresso boutique at street level

Office · Opéra

American Express Office at Opéra

The office by the Opéra where American expatriates collected their mail and cashed their cheques, and where David goes to escape Giovanni's room in Baldwin's novel.

Visit the place

Café · Grands Boulevards

Café Napolitain

The boulevard terrace where the novel opens — an apéritif on the Right Bank, watching the evening crowd, the electric signs, and the last horse-cabs go by.

Visit the place

Hotel · Opéra (behind the Palais Garnier)

Hôtel Scribe

A grand hotel behind the Opéra, on the rue Scribe. In Down and Out in Paris and London it is the good job that keeps slipping away — where Boris earned a hundred francs a day in tips before he fell ill, and where he and George Orwell stood on the pavement for an hour hoping the manager would come out and hire them.

Visit the place

The Olympia façade and marquee in colour on boulevard des Capucines

Theatre · Opéra

L'Olympia

The boulevard music hall where Colette played the title role in La Romanichelle in 1906, during her run as a professional performer.

Visit the place

The Friday Letter

Paris, one address at a time.

The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.