Palais Garnier

The Palais Garnier stands on the Place de l'Opera in Paris, designed by the young architect Charles Garnier, who won a competition against dozens of other entrants, and completed in 1875 as the home of the Paris Opera under the urban renewal program of Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann. Its lavish Beaux-Arts facade and interiors, including a grand marble staircase and a mirrored, gilded ceremonial foyer, were intended as much for the display of Parisian high society as for opera and ballet performances themselves. Its auditorium ceiling was repainted in 1964 by the artist Marc Chagall with scenes from well known operas and ballets, installed on a removable panel above the original ceiling so that Garnier's own work was preserved beneath it. The building's substructure includes an underground reservoir of water, which contributed to the legend behind Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera.