Palais Garnier

Chagall's 1964 ceiling above a Second Empire auditorium in red and gold

Charles Garnier won the competition as an unknown thirty-five-year-old and built a house in which the auditorium is almost an afterthought: the grand staircase, the mirrored foyer and the loggia exist so that the audience can look at itself, which in 1875 was the point of an evening.

The auditorium seats under two thousand, many of them with restricted views, under a ceiling Chagall painted in 1964 that scandalised the traditionalists and has long since won. Ballet works better here than opera; the bigger productions go to Bastille.