Charles Garnier won the 1861 competition as an unknown thirty-five-year-old. The empress reportedly asked him what style the design was in, and he answered, “It is in the Napoleon III style, Madame.” That answer became canonical. The Palais Garnier is the architectural signature of the Second Empire and the highest expression of Beaux-Arts theatricality.
The plan is a manifesto of Beaux-Arts logic. It moves along a single longitudinal axis through six discrete volumes: avant-corps, vestibule, grand staircase, foyer, auditorium, and fly tower. Every secondary function, from the imperial pavilion on the east flank to the subscribers’ rotunda on the west, is arranged on cross-axes that defer to the central spine. The grand staircase is the spatial climax of the building. It rises through thirty metres of double-height space, lined with Algerian onyx, red Languedoc marble, and gilded bronze balustrades, and it is conceived as a stage on which the audience enters and surveys itself. The auditorium beyond it is horseshoe in plan, seats 1,979 people across five tiers, and is crowned by a painted ceiling by Marc Chagall added in 1964. Externally the building is composed in classical academic fashion: a rusticated arcaded base; a piano nobile with paired Corinthian columns framing arched windows; a sculptural attic with allegorical figures; and a low copper dome above the auditorium with the fly tower rising behind it. The polychromy is unusually emphatic for the period, combining verde antico marbles, gilded bronze, mosaic, and painted decoration.
Externally, the building participates in Haussmann’s reconstruction of Paris. It terminates the Avenue de l’Opéra, a boulevard that was cut through the medieval fabric specifically to give the new monument a stage of its own. Garnier negotiated the cornice height, the sculptural programme, and the material of his building with the surrounding apartment blocks. The result remains a textbook example of how a public building can both dominate and complete an urban ensemble.