09/09/2026
This is a cross section model of the Palais Garnier, the Paris Opera House, on permanent display at the Musée d'Orsay. It is sliced straight through the middle at 19 feet long (5.8 meters), so every floor stacked inside the building is visible at once, from the roof down to the basement.
Charles Garnier won a competition that drew 171 entries to design it, and construction ran from 1861 to 1875. The site sat on marshy ground with groundwater so high that steam pumps running around the clock could not dry it out. Garnier's solution was to build an enormous cistern underneath the building to hold the water back and relieve the pressure. That cistern still exists today. It is the real underground lake that inspired The Phantom of the Opera.
Look closely at the model and you can pick out rooms plenty of visitors will recognize. The grand staircase sits right at the center, the marble stairway everyone photographs on the way in. Beside it is the auditorium, shaped like a horseshoe and topped with a painted ceiling. Above the stage is the flytower, the tall boxy section that held the ropes, pulleys, and scenery for every production. And tucked to one side, barely noticeable from the street, is a private pavilion built as a secure entrance for Napoleon III after someone tried to assassinate him on his way to the old opera house. He never used it. He died before the building was finished.
