Palais Garnier

Charles Garnier, a little-known 35-year-old architect, won the competition in 1861, and the building opened in 1875. The grand staircase of coloured marble, the gilded foyer inspired by Versailles and the red-velvet auditorium sum up the luxury of the Second Empire.

The auditorium ceiling was painted by Marc Chagall in 1964, over the original. In 1896 a counterweight of the eight-tonne chandelier fell, and that, along with the water tank in the basement, inspired Gaston Leroux's «The Phantom of the Opera».