The Franco-Prussian War in 1870 stopped construction on the opera house and resulted in France's defeat and Napoléon III's abdication.

All École des Beaux Arts alumni and Prix de Rome laureates, their academic finesse stood them in good stead when producing the vast neo-Baroque allegories that Garnier commissioned. Though his flamboyant architecture was rooted in the Renaissance and Baroque styles, Garnier innovatively built it over a fireproof iron skeleton.īy the end of 1863 Garnier had chosen the artists and sculptors to produce the iconographic interior decoration of the ceilings and walls, among whom were the painters Paul Baudry, Jules Lenepveu and Isidore Pils, and the sculptors Aimé Millet and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. Almost immediately an underground stream flooded the foundations, so Garnier reworked his plans, erecting his theater on a double concrete vat containing the water-hence the notorious Opéra Lake. Work commenced in July 1861 on the site of what is now the spacious Place de l'Opera. The winning architect, Garnier, was a blacksmith's son who had studied at the École des Beaux Arts, taking its Grand Prix de Rome for architecture in 1848. Napoléon and Eugénie escaped, but the emperor ordered the construction of a new Opéra as soon as possible-well isolated to prevent lurking assassins.Ī design competition opened in December 1860 with a month's deadline it drew 171 submissions.

14, as Emperor Napoléon III and Empress Eugénie drove to a gala performance there, an Italian conspirator, Felice Orsini, hiding in that alley, tossed three bombs into the street, killing 150 people. In 1858, Paris's Opéra was in the Rue Le Pelletier, near a dark alley-a security nightmare. The Palais Garnier is the masterpiece of architect Charles Garnier (1825-1898), who called his work 'the architecture of illustration.' The theater's statuary, allegorical ceiling and wall paintings, mosaic inlay and tapestries were designed as a harmonious and moving backdrop to the performances on stage.įor all its glory, the theater owes its existence to an attempted regicide. From the theater's statuary to its interior paintings, mosaics and tapestries, a design that was meant to be read like a book.

Paris opera house original ceiling