The construction of the Palais Garnier was decided in 1858, in the aftermath of an attack from which Napoleon III miraculously escaped on his way to the opera house in rue Le Peletier.
The construction of the Palais Garnier was decided in 1858, in the aftermath of an attack from which Napoleon III miraculously escaped on his way to the opera house in rue Le Peletier.
To prevent such a misadventure from happening again, the emperor launched the project of a new theater in a safer place and in December 1860, the young architect Charles Garnier won the competition in which 172 projects were in competition.
The building site was colossal and the inauguration of this 19,000-seat opera house did not take place until 1875.
In the meantime, the war of 1870 stopped the work and it was also necessary to solve technical constraints, imposed by the town planner and prefect Georges Eugène Haussmann with a trapezoid shape on the ground, or by the topography of the place since a water table was discovered nearby during the excavation work.
So that the water would not weaken the monument, it was decided to build a huge reservoir to withstand the pressure and better support the weight of the building.
This later gave rise to the urban legend of an underground lake under the Palais Garnier, fed by the Grange-Batelière, although this buried river is further away.
The café of Amélie, the mansion of Untouchables, the jazz club of the finale of La La Land, the Hôtel du Nord of the mythical replica of Arletty “Atmosphere”, the cinema of A bout de souffle, the restaurant of Ratatouille, the quays of the Seine of Midnight in Paris, the secret places of the Da Vinci Code, the grocery store of January in La Traversée de Paris , the Bridge of Inception and Peur sur la ville, the addresses of the spectacular scenes of Mission Impossible 6, but also series Call my agent, Gears, Le Bureau des légendes, Sense8, Sex and The City, Gossip Girl…
Etienne Daho’s Café de Flore, Jay-Z and Kanye West’s hotel in Nas in Paris, Serge Gainsbourg’s Poinçonneur des Lilas metro station, Serge Reggiani and Marc Lavoine’s Mirabeau Bridge, Mc Solaar’s Lyon station…
The places evoked in the comics Adèle Blanc-Sec, Largo Winch, Blake and Mortimer, Michel Vaillant…
But also in the novels of Ernest Hemingway, Victor Hugo, Leo Malet, Daniel Pennac, Marc Levy, Guillaume Musso… you’ll find all the must-see places of Parisian Pop Culture in this new guide.
