Palais Garnier

The Paris Opera had been lodged in a temporary hall, the Salle Le Peletier, since 1821. On 14 January 1858 Italian republicans led by Felice Orsini threw explosive devices at Napoleon III's procession outside it; the imperial couple were unhurt, eight people were killed and about 142 injured. The cramped street access there had left the head of state without a secure separate entrance, adding to the case for a new state-funded house. An imperial decree of 29 September 1860 fixed a site off the Boulevard des Capucines, and the Minister of State, Count Alexandre Colonna-Walewski, called a design competition rather than choose between Charles Rohault de Fleury, the opera's own architect, and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who had the Empress Eugénie's backing. Around 170 projects came in under anonymous mottoes; Charles Garnier's was Torquato Tasso's "Bramo assai, poco spero" — "Hope for much, expect little". He took fifth prize, reached the final seven, and in the last days of May 1861 the jury chose his revised design.

Funds were voted on 2 July 1861 and Garnier set up the Opéra Agence, his site office, with Louis-Victor Louvet as his second-in-command. Excavation ran from 27 August to 31 December 1861 and the first concrete was poured on 13 January 1862. An opera house needs a far deeper substage than most buildings, and the groundwater proved unexpectedly high: wells sunk in February and eight steam pumps running around the clock from March failed to dry the site. Garnier's answer was a double foundation enclosing a water course and a large concrete cistern, the cuve, which relieved pressure on the basement walls and held a reservoir against fire. A persistent legend that the building sat over an underground lake followed, and it was that legend Gaston Leroux took up in The Phantom of the Opera. Scaffolding came off the main façade on 15 August 1867 for the Paris Exposition, the entablature reading "Académie Impériale de Musique".

Napoleon III was deposed on 4 September 1870 and the opera was renamed Théâtre National de l'Opéra on 17 September; only the first six letters of "Impériale" were recut on the façade, leaving "Académie Nationale de Musique". Building stopped during the siege of Paris from September 1870 to January 1871, and the unfinished halls served as a food store and a hospital. Garnier fell seriously ill from the privations of the siege, leaving Louvet in Paris through the Commune. National Guard troops bivouacked in the building and handed out food to soldiers and civilians until Republican troops took it on 23 May 1871; repairs to the Commune's damage came to three hundred thousand gold francs. Work restarted on 30 September 1871. Economies then forced Garnier to abandon sections, among them the Pavillon de l'Empereur, which later became the home of the opera's library-museum. On the night of 28–29 October 1873 the Salle Le Peletier burned down, and Garnier was instructed to finish the new house as fast as he could.

In 1874 the government borrowed 4.9 million gold francs at six per cent from François Blanc, who managed the Monte Carlo Casino. The orchestra tested the acoustics on 17 October and again on 2 December, the ballet danced on the stage on 12 December, and the chandelier was lit six days later. The building was handed over on 30 December 1874 at a total of thirty-six million gold francs. Marshal MacMahon, the Lord Mayor of London and King Alfonso XII of Spain attended the gala inauguration on 5 January 1875, and Garnier stepped out onto the landing of the grand staircase during the interval to take the applause.

Electric lighting was installed in 1881. On 20 May 1896 one of the chandelier's counterweights broke free and burst through the auditorium ceiling, killing a concierge; the incident lies behind one of the more famous scenes in Leroux's 1910 novel. The building has been a classified monument historique since 16 October 1923. In 1964 a ceiling painted by Marc Chagall, showing scenes from operas by fourteen composers, was fixed on a removable frame over Jules-Eugène Lenepveu's original. When the Opéra Bastille opened in 1989 the Palais Garnier ceased to be the company's principal theatre, and the Paris Opera, which owns it, now uses it mainly for ballet. A restoration begun in 1994 modernised the stage machinery and conserved the décor, finishing in 2007. It also holds the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra de Paris, managed by the Bibliothèque nationale de France and included in unaccompanied tours.