# Palais Garnier audio guide, five stops, free.

Opened on 5 January 1875 behind a facade 32 metres high, Garnier's opera house gets five narrated places here; photograph any other bust, mosaic or lyre and Chiaro tells you its story.

Made by Chiaro. Not affiliated with Palais Garnier. Page: https://chiaro.ai/landmarks/palais-garnier/

Our Palais Garnier audio guide opens out on the square, in front of Charles Garnier's gilded facade and before any ticket, and then keeps to the self-guided circuit the Opéra itself lays out inside. From the square, walk round to your left, down the west side of the building, to the visitors' door at the corner of Rue Scribe and Rue Auber. Inside, the order is the one printed on the Opéra's leaflet: through the round Rotonde des Abonnés to the Pythia in her grotto at ground level, up the Grand Staircase, into the auditorium from the first-tier boxes, then on through the Salon du Glacier and the mosaic Avant-Foyer to the Grand Foyer on the south front, whose windows look back down Avenue de l'Opéra. The five recordings add up to roughly ten minutes; the Opéra itself allows an hour and a half for the whole visit.

Tickets, hours and access on this page come from operadeparis.fr, the Opéra national de Paris's own site, and from its visit leaflet, read on 26 September 2026; the history has a second published source behind it as well. The auditorium is the part most likely to be out of reach on the day, because rehearsals take it over without warning, and the whole visit closes for daytime performances. Should an usher inside say otherwise, go with the usher, who knows the building better than we do, and send us a line about the difference.

## The stops

### 1. The main facade from Place de l'Opéra

Charles Garnier (1825–1898), for Napoleon III; gilded groups by Charles Gumery (1827–1871), Apollo by Aimé Millet (1819–1891) · 1861–1875; the facade unveiled on 15 August 1867 · Stone, coloured marbles and gilded bronze; 32 m from the ground to the top of the facade · Place de l'Opéra, on the south side of the building, facing the main facade; free, before any ticket

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/palais-garnier/en/place-de-l-opera-facade.mp3?v=1093424 (137 s)

Look for:
- The gilt letters over the loggia: ACADEMIE NATIONALE DE MUSIQUE. The first word after Académie used to be Impériale, and in 1870 only its first six letters were swapped out.
- The N and E in the medallions of the attic, the monogram of Napoléon Empereur. The letters there now were made to Garnier's own design and only went up in the restoration of 2000.
- The two gilded groups on the corners, Charles Gumery's Harmony on the left and Poetry on the right, and behind the green dome, on the gable of the stage house, Apollo lifting his lyre.
- The composers' busts in the round openings between the columns of the loggia: from the left, Rossini, Auber, Beethoven, Mozart, Spontini, Meyerbeer and Halévy.

Stand far enough back on the square that the whole front fits in your eyes at once, because Charles Garnier built it to be read from here. The avenue behind you, Avenue de l'Opéra, runs straight up to this facade and ends against it, so that the whole view down the street closes on a theatre.

Start at the top and work down. On the two corners, the gilded groups flashing in the sun are Charles Gumery's Harmony, on your left, and Poetry, on your right. They were not the plan. When Napoleon the Third saw a plaster model of the design, he had the terrace at the top replaced by the massive attic you can see now, meant to carry imperial chariots. The chariots never came. Gumery's gold figures went up in 1869 instead. Above and behind the green dome, on the gable of the stage house, is Aimé Millet's Apollo, holding his lyre up over Paris.

Now the attic itself. In the medallions you can pick out an N and an E, Napoléon Empereur. The letters made for them were not ready in time for the unveiling, and after the Empire fell in 1870 Garnier was relieved to take the stand-ins down. The ones up there today were made to his original design and only installed in the restoration of 2000.

Drop your eyes to the gold inscription over the columns. Académie Nationale de Musique. It was cut as Académie Impériale, and when the Republic came, someone replaced only the first six letters of Impériale. Between the paired columns of the loggia are gilded busts of composers: from the left, Rossini, Auber, Beethoven, Mozart, Spontini, Meyerbeer and Halévy. Fourteen painters and mosaicists and seventy-three sculptors worked on this front, in seventeen different materials.

Garnier was not famous when he won it. About a hundred and seventy architects entered the first round of the competition in 1860, and his motto was a line from Tasso: hope for much, expect little. There is a story, and it is only a story, that the Empress asked him what style this was supposed to be, since it was neither Louis the Fourteenth, Fifteenth nor Sixteenth, and he told her it was Napoléon the Third.

One last thing, down at street level: the inner of the two sculpture groups to the right of the doors is a copy. The original, Carpeaux's La Danse, was called indecent when it was unveiled in 1869, and one night that August someone threw a bottle of black ink over it. A replacement was actually ordered. Then war broke out, everyone forgot, and Carpeaux's dancers stayed. The original has been in the Musée d'Orsay since 1986.

### 2. The Pythia in her grotto under the Grand Staircase

Adèle d'Affry, known as Marcello (1836–1879); grotto by Charles Garnier (1825–1898) · Modelled in Rome in 1869, shown at the Salon of 1870, in place for the opening in 1875 · Bronze on a tall tripod base, 290 cm high · Ground level, the Bassin de la Pythie at the foot of the Grand Staircase, just past the Rotonde des Abonnés

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/palais-garnier/en/bassin-de-la-pythie.mp3?v=951109 (119 s)

Look for:
- Before you reach her, the ceiling of the round Rotonde des Abonnés: the arabesques in its central medallion spell out JEAN LOUIS CHARLES GARNIER ARCHITECTE 1861-1875. It is the architect's signature on the building.
- Her bare foot hanging off the tripod and the snakes curling round its base. Marcello wanted a Pythia like the fortune tellers of India, with tamed snakes.
- The two bronze lamp standards either side of her, by Jules Corboz, who also modelled the chandelier upstairs.
- The carved vault over the grotto: plants, musical instruments, masks and shells. Garnier imagined this space as a nymphaeum, a shrine to water nymphs.

You have just come through the Rotonde des Abonnés, the round hall at the start of the visit, and if you did not look up in there, it is worth a few steps back: the curly ornament in the middle of its ceiling spells out Jean Louis Charles Garnier, Architecte, 1861 to 1875. The architect signed his building in the one place almost nobody reads.

Now the woman in the grotto in front of you. She is the Pythia, the priestess of Apollo who delivered his oracles, perched on the tripod where she received them. She was never meant to be here. Garnier kept this niche for a seated marble Orpheus, calm and white, and the money for it never came. He had already seen this figure in clay, in a studio in Rome, and liked it without thinking it belonged in his theatre. Two years later he saw it cast in bronze in Paris, tried the effect under his staircase, and asked the minister to buy it. His own verdict was that instead of a very calm god he had got a tormented bronze, a priestess of Apollo tormenting herself on her tripod. He called it the only decorative work in the whole building that was not made for the Opera.

The sculptor signed as Marcello. Her name was Adèle d'Affry, Duchess of Castiglione-Colonna, a Swiss sculptor and painter working in Rome. The Pythia began as a bust and grew into this, two metres ninety of bronze, and when she needed arms, shoulders and hands she modelled them on her own. It did not come easily. The figure collapsed twice in her studio, and on the way to Paris the model broke into a hundred pieces. She wanted, in her words, an Indian Pythia, like the fortune tellers of India with their tamed snakes. Look down at the base and you will find them.

The basin you are standing at was once a fountain: a jet of water threw up a fine mist, and you saw her through it. Water is the right theme for this level. When the foundations were dug, groundwater kept flooding the site, eight steam pumps ran day and night and it still would not dry out, so Garnier built a double foundation around a vast concrete cistern. That tank is where the legend of a lake under the Opéra comes from, the lake Gaston Leroux gave his Phantom.

At the inauguration in January 1875 the public and the critics took to her at once, which surprised Marcello as much as it delighted her.

### 3. The Grand Staircase

Charles Garnier (1825–1898); torchère figures by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (1824–1887); ceiling paintings by Isidore Pils (1815–1875) · 1861–1875 · White Seravezza marble steps, onyx handrail on red and green marble; the stairwell rises 30 m · The Grand Staircase, from the foot of the first flight up to the landings

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/palais-garnier/en/grand-escalier.mp3?v=928957 (116 s)

Look for:
- The two bronze women at the foot of the first flight, by Carrier-Belleuse, holding up bouquets of light. They were gas lamps first and electric later.
- The rail under your hand: pale onyx on top, 128 balusters of red antique marble below, on a base of green Swedish marble.
- The steps themselves. They swell from concave to convex as they climb, and only one of them in the whole staircase is straight.
- The balconies stacked on all four walls of the well, where the upper flights lead. From up there everyone arriving below is on show.

Stop at the bottom of the first flight and look up. The space you are standing in rises thirty metres, and the Opéra's own description of it is a nave, the word you would use for a cathedral. The stairs split in front of you into two flights that swing away and come back together, and on every side, stacked up the walls, there are balconies. Garnier did not build this to get people from the door to their seats. He built it so that they could watch each other doing it. The Opéra's own leaflet calls the foot of this staircase a theatre within the theatre.

Start with the two bronze women on the pedestals at the foot of the stairs, holding up bouquets of light. They are by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, and they held gas flames before the building went electric.

Now put your hand on the rail as you climb. The handrail is onyx, the balusters under it are red antique marble, a hundred and twenty-eight of them, and the base they stand on is green marble from Sweden. The steps are white marble from Seravezza, and here is the thing worth checking with your own feet: they are not straight. Each one curves, from concave at the bottom to convex higher up, to follow the line of the balustrade, and there is exactly one straight step in the entire staircase. The idea itself was borrowed: Garnier took his cue from the grand staircase Victor Louis built for the theatre in Bordeaux.

What you cannot see is how much of this is iron. The building stands on masonry walls, but the floors, vaults and roofs are carried on concealed iron. All the marble is a costume.

Look right up at the ceiling paintings, by Isidore Pils: Apollo in triumph, Minerva fighting brutality, and the City of Paris receiving the plan of the new Opéra, the building congratulating itself. They nearly did not happen. When they were fixed in place, two months before the opening, Garnier saw at once that they were too dark for the space. Pils, then sixty-one, went back up the scaffolding and repainted them overhead, fell ill doing it, and his students finished the job. The scaffolding came down the day before the opening.

And on that opening night, the fifth of January 1875, during the interval, Garnier walked out onto the landing of this staircase and the audience applauded him. Find that landing and stand where he stood for a moment, with the whole well of marble dropping away below you.

### 4. The auditorium, from the first-tier boxes

Charles Garnier (1825–1898); painted curtain designed by Auguste Rubé (1817–1899) and Philippe Chaperon (1823–1906) · Opened 5 January 1875 · Iron frame clad in marble, stucco, velvet and gilding; horseshoe plan, stage opening 16 m wide · First-tier boxes (1res loges), looking into the auditorium when its doors are open; rehearsals often close it

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/palais-garnier/en/salle-de-spectacle.mp3?v=980157 (123 s)

Look for:
- The stage curtain. Every fold of red velvet, every tassel and every gold fringe is paint on a flat canvas, designed by Auguste Rubé and Philippe Chaperon to Garnier's instructions.
- The horseshoe of boxes curving round you. The Opéra's leaflet says the room was designed to see and be seen, and the boxes face each other as much as the stage.
- The round porthole windows in the mahogany box doors as you come in from the corridor.
- The lyres worked into the gilded balcony fronts among the laurel leaves. The lyre is Garnier's signature motif all over the building.

Before you go in, look at the door. The corridors that ring the auditorium are lined with mosaic, and the boxes open off them through mahogany doors with a round porthole in each. If a rehearsal has the auditorium shut when you get here, those portholes are your view, and everything that follows still holds.

Inside, you are in a box on the first tier, and the thing to notice is not straight ahead. It is to the left and right. The room is a horseshoe, and in the Opéra's own words it was designed to see and be seen. The boxes curve round so that they face each other almost as squarely as they face the stage. This was a room for watching the audience as much as the opera.

Then the red and gold. It is all a skin. Under the velvet, the stucco, the marble and the gilding is a metal structure, and it is that iron that carries the great chandelier hanging over the stalls, with its three hundred and forty lights. Critics complained before it was even made that it would block the view of the stage from the fourth tier. Garnier answered them in print: what else could fill the theatre with such joyous life?

It is also the chandelier everyone thinks fell. It did not. On the twentieth of May 1896 one of its counterweights broke loose, came down through the ceiling and into the auditorium, and killed one person. The chandelier itself never moved. Gaston Leroux took the story and made it one of the great scenes in The Phantom of the Opera, and the chandelier has been falling in people's imaginations ever since.

Above the chandelier, a later painting now covers Lenepveu's original ceiling.

Now look at the stage curtain, because it is a lie, and a beautiful one. That heavy drape of red velvet, the gold braid, the tassels, the fringe gathered up at one side: none of it is fabric in folds. It is a flat canvas, painted in trompe-l'oeil by two theatre painters, Auguste Rubé and Philippe Chaperon, following Garnier's instructions. It has been replaced twice, in 1951 and again in 1996, each time as an exact copy of the one before.

The opening behind it is sixteen metres wide, and the stage beyond runs twenty-seven metres deep and sixty metres from the lowest level under the boards up into the flies. This house belongs mostly to the ballet now. Picture that painted velvet lifting on a line of dancers, and the whole horseshoe leaning forward at once.

### 5. The Grand Foyer, and the view down Avenue de l'Opéra

Charles Garnier (1825–1898); vault paintings by Paul Baudry (1828–1886); Avant-Foyer mosaics after Curzon, set by Salviati · 1875; restored in 2003–2004 · Gilded stucco, mirrors and painted canvas; 54 m long, 13 m wide and 18 m high · Grand Foyer, first floor on the south side, at the windows over Avenue de l'Opéra

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/palais-garnier/en/grand-foyer.mp3?v=925613 (116 s)

Look for:
- A door handle or a heating grille. The lyre is on those too: the Opéra's leaflet says it rules the whole decorative vocabulary of the room.
- Carpeaux's bust of Charles Garnier, a copy, standing near a window. Beyond the glass, Avenue de l'Opéra runs straight to the Louvre.
- The mirrors, nearly six metres tall, opposite the five French windows. They multiply the chandeliers and make a room thirteen metres wide feel far wider.
- Paul Baudry's paintings running the length of the vault, scenes from the history of music.

You came in through the Avant-Foyer, the vaulted passage with the gold mosaic ceiling, so turn round for a moment before you walk any further. Up there in the mosaic are two inscriptions in Greek letters. One says that decorative mosaic was applied for the first time in France here, on this vault. The other credits the team: figures painted by Curzon, set by Salviati, ornament by Facchina, architecture by Charles Garnier. The two little round rooms at either end are the Salon of the Sun and the Salon of the Moon, one meant to be hot and one cold, and in the rush to finish for 1875 the themes ended up the wrong way round.

Now the Grand Foyer. Fifty-four metres long, eighteen high and only thirteen wide, and it is the width that makes it feel endless, because the long wall facing the windows is broken up by mirrors nearly six metres tall. Garnier had in mind the great galleries of French palaces, Fontainebleau, the Galerie d'Apollon at the Louvre, the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, and he built it as a drawing room for all of Paris society. Until that opening night, a theatre foyer was for men; the ladies received in their boxes. On the fifth of January 1875 the Queen of Spain wanted to see this room, walked in, and the other ladies of the house followed her.

The ceiling is Paul Baudry's, scenes from the history of music. Count the Muses and you will come up one short: there are nine in the myth and eight here, because there was no room, and Polyhymnia was the one left out. Now look for the lyre. The Opéra itself says it rules the whole room, on the capitals, on the heating grilles, even on the door handles. And somewhere up at ceiling height, his assistants had two gilded heads of Apollo carved with Garnier's own face, without telling him.

The gold curtains are recent. A fire in 1928 took the originals, and the room went without them for more than seventy years, until the restoration that finished in 2004.

Finish at the windows. Near one of them stands a bust of Garnier himself, a copy of the one Carpeaux made. Stand beside it and look out. Below you is Place de l'Opéra, where this walk began, and running away from it, dead straight, is Avenue de l'Opéra, all the way down to the Louvre.

## Before you go

Palais Garnier, Place de l'Opéra, 75009 Paris. The first stop plays on Place de l'Opéra itself, facing the gilded front; visitors on the self-guided tour go in round on the building's western flank, where Rue Scribe meets Rue Auber.

Métro line 3, 7 or 8 to Opéra, or line 7 or 9 to Chaussée d'Antin – La Fayette. RER A to Auber. Around a dozen bus lines stop close by, the 20, 21, 27 and 95 among them, and the night lines N15 and N16.

- Tickets for the visit are sold online only, for a date and a time slot, and go on sale 30 days ahead; nothing is sold at the door. You may arrive up to 30 minutes after your slot, and tickets cannot be refunded or exchanged.
- Rehearsals shut the auditorium often and without warning, and the Opéra is plain that no ticket guarantees access to it. The fourth stop's recording is written so that it still makes sense from the porthole windows in the box doors.
- Visits run every day from 10am to 5pm, 6pm during summer time, except on days with a daytime performance and on occasional closure days, which the booking calendar marks. Last admission is an hour before closing.
- The 2026 prices depend on where you live: an adult pays 25 euros, or 15 euros with proof of residence or nationality in France or another European Economic Area country; 13 to 25 year-olds pay 20 or 10 euros, and children aged 12 and under go free. Suitcases and travel bags are not allowed inside, and the cloakrooms are closed during visiting hours.

The Opéra's own guide is Revelacio, a 90-minute multimedia tour on an iPad mini in ten languages, English among them: 8 euros at the Opéra, or 7 euros added to your ticket online. It is available every day from 10am to 3.30pm, until 4.30pm in August. A children's version for ages 6 to 13 costs 6.50 euros, as do the audio-described tour in French and the tour in French Sign Language. The Opéra also runs guided tours priced from 11 to 35 euros. Our recordings need no tablet at all, and the first one is already playing while you are still out on the square looking up at Apollo.

Official site: https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/visits/palais-garnier

## Questions

**Is there a free Palais Garnier audio guide?**

Yes: the five stops on this page, from the square outside to the Grand Foyer, play in your browser, and every word of them is printed below the players. The Opéra's own multimedia guide is a paid tablet tour, 8 euros or 7 euros bought online with your ticket. For the busts, mosaics and painted figures these five pass by, photograph one and the Chiaro app tells you what it is.

**Can I listen to the Palais Garnier audio guide without a ticket?**

Only for the opening stop, which is heard on Place de l'Opéra looking at the facade. The other four are inside on the self-guided visit, which needs a ticket booked online for a date and a time slot, because none are sold on site. The recordings themselves cost nothing either way.

**How much is the official Palais Garnier audio guide?**

The Opéra's Revelacio tablet tour costs 8 euros, or 7 euros pre-purchased online, and runs 90 minutes in any of ten languages. The children's tablet tour for ages 6 to 13 costs 6.50 euros. Both can be had daily between 10am and 3.30pm, or 4.30pm in August.

**Will I be able to see the auditorium at the Palais Garnier?**

Not on every visit. The Opéra warns that rehearsals cause frequent and unpredictable closures of the auditorium and that no ticket guarantees access to it. The rest of the circuit, from the Pythia to the Grand Foyer, is in the public areas your ticket covers.

**Where is the visitors' entrance to the Palais Garnier?**

Where Rue Scribe meets Rue Auber, on the western flank of the building. From the first stop on Place de l'Opéra it is a short walk round the corner to the left as you face the facade.

**When is the Palais Garnier open for visits?**

Every day from 10am to 5pm, and to 6pm during summer time, except on days with a daytime performance and on occasional closure days, which the booking calendar marks. Last admission is one hour before closing, and the visiting areas are cleared fifteen minutes before the theatre closes.

## Continue in the app

Point Chiaro at anything at the Palais Garnier.

Seventy-three sculptors worked on the facade alone, eight painted Muses hang in the Grand Foyer and the lyre turns up even on its door handles, so five recordings leave most of the house unexplained. Photograph a composer's bust in the loggia, a mosaic panel in the Avant-Foyer or a figure in Baudry's ceiling, and Chiaro names it, tells you who made it and why it is there, and stays with you through as many follow-up questions as the house prompts.

Download Chiaro: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6745618830?pt=127817940&ct=palais-garnier-md&mt=8