The avenue de l’Opéra is unusual in that it does not have any trees planted on it. He also levelled two small hills, the Butte Saint Roch and the Butte des Moulins and a fountain, the Fontaine d’Amour. To accommodate the large width of avenue de l’Opéra, Haussmann demolished a number of streets and their houses.
It was renamed avenue de l’Opéra in 1873. The avenue was supposed to be called Avenue Napoleon in the Emperor’s honour, but the fall of the Second Empire in 1870 meant that Napoleon would never have his own street named after him. The road would allow the Emperor to ride straight from the Louvre palace where he lived to the Opera House, and he would step into the building at the back directly from his carriage, thereby avoiding any would-be assassins. Construction was also interrupted by the Franco-Prussian war in 1870.īaron Haussmann wanted the Opera House to be the crowning glory of the magnificent Avenue de l’Opéra that runs from the Comédie Française theatre on what is now place André-Malraux in the 1st arrondissement to place de l’Opéra. This river inspired Gaston Leroux when he wrote his novel The Phantom of the Opera. Baron Haussmann was very specific about the location of the future building and he was deaf to the many requests for flexibility made by the architect, the young Charles Garnier, who was forced to make a number of changes to his plans.īuilding of the Opera was fraught with difficulties, such as the discovery of a body of water beneath the building. The Emperor, Napoleon III, decided that he wanted a new opera house the day after an attempt was made upon his life at the then opera house on rue Le Peletier which left 8 dead and more than a hundred wounded. Work began on it in 1861, and it officially opened in 1875. Its neo-Baroque style is very representative of the eclectic architectural style in vogue in the second half of the 19th century.
The Garnier Opera House is the most spectacular and imposing building built during the Second Empire.
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