Opéra Garnier

Charles Garnier was a virtually unknown 35-year-old architect when he won the design competition for the new Paris opera house in 1861. When Empress Eugénie asked him what style the building was, he reportedly answered: "It's Napoleon III style, Madame." He wasn't being cheeky — he was inventing a new style on the spot, a maximalist fusion of Baroque, Renaissance, and classical elements dripping with marble, gold, and ornamental excess.

The building took fifteen years to complete, partly because workers hit an underground lake during excavation. They couldn't drain it, so they built a massive concrete cistern beneath the foundation. This subterranean reservoir became the inspiration for Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera — the phantom's underground lair, complete with a lake navigated by gondola, is based on a real feature of the building. The cistern still exists and is maintained by the Paris fire brigade, who keep fish in it to monitor water quality.

The Grand Staircase is the most theatrical space in the building, and it was designed that way deliberately. Garnier understood that opera wasn't just about what happened on stage — it was about seeing and being seen. The staircase was a stage in itself, where the audience performed for each other, parading in their finery.

In 1964, Marc Chagall was commissioned to paint a new ceiling for the auditorium, and the result — a swirling, dreamlike composition featuring scenes from fourteen operas — remains one of the most controversial artistic interventions in Paris. Purists objected to a modern painting in a 19th-century room. But standing beneath it, looking up at Chagall's angels and dancers floating above the six-tonne crystal chandelier, the clash somehow works.