Palais Garnier

Stand at the bottom of the front steps for a moment. Traffic circles behind you, scooters hum past, and somewhere a bus brakes with a long sigh. In front of you, the building rises in layers of pale stone, coloured marble and gold. The gilded figures on the roofline catch the light before anything else does. This is the Palais Garnier, the old opera house of Paris, and it was built to be seen from far away.

The building sits at the end of a long, straight avenue. That is not an accident. In the 1850s and 1860s, Emperor Napoleon the Third and his prefect, Baron Haussmann, rebuilt much of Paris. They cut wide boulevards through crowded medieval streets. A new opera house was planned as one of the showpieces of this new city. It needed a grand setting, and it needed to look important from every direction.

In 1861, an open design competition chose a young architect who was almost unknown at the time. His name was Charles Garnier. He was in his mid-thirties, and he had studied in Rome and travelled in Greece. His winning plan was bold and full of colour. The building now carries his name, which is rare. Most public buildings are named for rulers or saints — not for the person who drew them.

There is a well-known story about that competition. According to the popular tale, Empress Eugénie looked at the design and asked what style it was. It was not Greek, not Roman, not Gothic. Garnier is said to have answered that it was the style of Napoleon the Third. Whether he really said it or not, the answer fits. The building mixes many older styles into something new, and that mix became a symbol of the Second Empire.

Now a surprise most visitors never hear about. When the builders started digging the foundations, they hit water. The ground here was wet, and water kept rising into the pit. For months, pumps worked to drain it. In the end, Garnier designed a thick concrete basin under the building. It holds water to this day and helps to support the weight above. Firefighters have long used this underground reservoir for training.

That hidden water under the stage gave a writer an idea. In 1910, Gaston Leroux published a novel called The Phantom of the Opera. In his story, a masked man lives in the cellars beneath this building, beside an underground lake. The novel led to films, and later to a famous stage musical. So the dark lake of the Phantom is fiction... but it grew from a real basin of water under your feet.

Building the opera took a long time. Work slowed during the war with Prussia in 1870, and the Second Empire fell that same year. The emperor who ordered the building never saw it finished. It finally opened in 1875, under a new republic. Look up at the facade as you think about this. It was made for an empire that no longer existed when the curtain first rose.

The front of the building is full of detail. Along the upper level, small bronze busts show famous composers. Golden groups of figures stand at the corners of the roof. At the very top, above the stage, a statue of Apollo raises a lyre — Apollo was the Greek god of music and poetry. Lower down, sculpture groups stand between the arches. One of them, called The Dance, by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, caused a scandal when it was unveiled. Critics found the dancing figures far too free and joyful.

If you go inside, the Grand Staircase is the first real moment. Marble of many colours climbs in curving flights, white, green, red and pink. The stairs split and turn, and balconies look down on them from every side. Garnier understood something important. In his time, people came to the opera to see each other, not only the stage. The staircase works like a second theatre, where the audience becomes the show.

The auditorium itself is shaped like a horseshoe, lined with red velvet and gold. Above the seats hangs a huge crystal and bronze chandelier. In 1896, a counterweight from the chandelier system fell during a performance, and a person was killed. Leroux later used a falling chandelier in his novel. Above the chandelier, the ceiling shows a painting from 1964 by Marc Chagall. Its bright, floating colours surprised many Parisians, because they sit inside such an old and formal room.

Don't miss the Grand Foyer. This long gallery is covered in gold, mirrors and painted ceilings. It was a place to walk and talk during the intervals. Many visitors compare it to the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Inside the building there is also a library and museum, with costumes, set models and old documents from the opera's long life. Small details here tell you a lot about how a night at the opera once felt.

Today, most large opera productions in Paris take place at the Opéra Bastille, a modern house that opened in 1989. The Palais Garnier now hosts mainly ballet, along with some opera and concerts. It is home to the Paris Opera Ballet and its dance school traditions. Here is one more surprise: beehives have been kept on the roof. Bees from this old theatre gather pollen from gardens and trees across the city.

Before you leave, turn and look back up at the building once more. Notice how the colours change as the light moves. The gold looks warm in the afternoon and softer at dusk. Watch the people on the steps — friends meeting, tourists resting, someone reading in the sun. As you walk away down the avenue, glance back over your shoulder. Garnier planned for exactly that view, and it still works.