The Grand Staircase
Thirty metres of polychrome marble beneath bronze torchères — the building's most photographed spot, deservedly.
Alexander Hoernigk — CC BY 3.0 · Peter Rivera — CC BY 2.0 · Sukkoria — CC BY-SA 4.0 · P e z i — CC BY-SA 3.0
Usually yes, from the boxes — but it closes without notice for rehearsals and setups. If the auditorium is your main goal, only a performance ticket guarantees it.
There is a real underground water tank beneath the building that seeded the legend — Paris fire-brigade divers train in it — but it's on no visitor route.
Sales open months ahead on the official site; the last categories are cheap with partial views — and last-minute tickets appear before curtain for the daring.
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Asked what style his building was, architect Charles Garnier replied: "It is Napoleon III style" — and he was right; the Palais Garnier is less a building than an architectural manifesto of absolute opulence: marble of every colour, gold on every edge, and a Grand Staircase designed as a stage where the audience watches the audience. Opened in 1875 as the largest opera house in the world, its cellars and underground lake inspired the legend of the Phantom of the Opera. In the red-and-gold auditorium, an eight-tonne chandelier hangs beneath a ceiling Marc Chagall painted in 1964 in his dreamlike colours — the loveliest meeting of two centuries in Paris. Visit by day, self-guided or on a tour, taking in the Grand Staircase, the gilded Grand Foyer and (rehearsals permitting) the auditorium — or better still, attend an evening ballet, when the building does what it was born to do. Performance tickets go on sale months ahead and vanish fast.
Thirty metres of polychrome marble beneath bronze torchères — the building's most photographed spot, deservedly.
A 54-metre hall of gold, murals and chandeliers built to rival Versailles' Hall of Mirrors — and nearly out-glittering it.
Chagall's dream-coloured 1964 ceiling floats over the red auditorium, above the eight-tonne chandelier that starred in a real "Phantom" incident.
Attend a performance and live the building as intended: evening dress on the staircase, the auditorium aglow — a Paris memory no tour equals.
Place de l'Opéra, 75009 Paris