Flâneries in Paris: The Opera District

This is the 24th in a series of walking tours highlighting the sites and stories of diverse districts of Paris.

For a wow moment when exiting a metro station, it’s hard to top the sight of the Palais Garnier against a vivid blue sky which greets you as you come to the top of the steps at Opéra. Granted, I had to turn round to see it, but it’s a moment of – pun intended! – pure theater. In order to fully appreciate this very classiest corner of  Paris, I walked about half way down the Avenue de l’Opéra before turning round and coming slowly back up.   

The façade of the Opera House is quite something. Groups of golden figures, representing Poésie and Harmonie rise from each side of the roof, and Apollo himself crowns the central dome. Below them is an ever-changing array of marble columns, busts of composers, medallions in red and gold with the initials E and N for the Emperor Napoléon III, plus carvings galore representing music, drama, dance, song. It oozes pleasure and opulence. 

Imagine the excitement on January 5th, 1875 when it opened. Here amid Haussmann’s grand boulevards now stood an opulent centerpiece which would blot out the horrors of the recent Prussian defeat and attract world-wide admiration. As a journalist for Le Sifflet wrote at the time, “Foreigners who come to visit this marvel will see that despite all our misfortunes, Paris is and always will be without rival.” Bystanders could watch King Alfonso of Spain and the Lord Mayor of London traveling up the Avenue de l’Opéra in gilded coaches and marvel over what was rumored to be inside: a grand sweeping staircase, marble pillars of every hue, mosaics, statues, candelabra, that 7 ton bronze and crystal chandelier. 

Historians sometimes describe this showpiece event as ushering in the Belle Époque and here, around the Opéra, I could still feel a little of its glamor. Some 150 years ago, the wide new pavements of the Grands Boulevards – Boulevard Haussmann, Boulevard des Capucines – began to fill up with café terraces. Little glass-canopied shopping arcades opened up between the main streets. One of the first grands magasins, Printemps, had opened near here in 1865, and a decade later it boasted some of the earliest elevators in Paris. The area had been redesigned for pleasure – shopping, lingering in cafés, a little ballet or opera – and so I decided I would go in search of a little indulgence myself. 

On Place de l’Opéra itself is the Fragonard Perfume Museum and it’s free to enter. The company itself was founded in the 1920s, but the museum covers the history of perfume more generally. After fascinating snippets on, for instance, the five baths Louis XIV took during his entire lifetime – hence the need for plenty of perfume at court! – came an exquisite collection of 19th-century luxury perfume bottles, some of them designed by the city’s best goldsmiths. I could just imagine one of the wealthy  ladies of Belle Époque Paris admiring one of these as the centerpiece of her table de toilette, pausing for a little extra dab of scent before leaving for the opera, perhaps resolving to restock, or maybe try another fragrance on her next shopping trip.

I walked all around the Opera complex and kept noticing new style elements. Was it really a mix of everything from classical pillars to baroque flamboyance with, in its iron framework, a foretaste of the new building techniques which would later be called Art Nouveau? Apparently so, for I read later that the Empress Eugénie, who had favored Viollet-le-Duc over Charles Garnier as the architect for the project, actually asked the latter what style this was supposed to be. Agreeing with her that it was not Louis XIV, or indeed Louis anything else, Garnier replied that it was “Style Napoléon III.” There are risqué elements too, such as the row of nearly-nude female statues, each topped by an iron and glass lamp, which line one side.

A two-minute walk away is Printemps, once the latest word in Parisian stores. In the 1870s customers marveled that everything had a price tag – no need to haggle any more ! – and that life size models were used to show off the latest fashions. Today it’s part of a chain, but this remains the flagship store, nine floors filled with luxury groceries and this season’s fashion choices. I’m not a natural shopper and felt a little dazed. But I knew that to enjoy the best of the store in a fine Belle Époque ambiance, I just needed to visit the Bleue Coupole Restaurant and Tea Room on the sixth floor.

The restaurant is tucked into one side of the vast circular floor and before I went in, I walked all around to admire and photograph the spectacular stained-glass cupola. That day, the sun shone beautifully through the dominant blues and greens of the glass, an exuberance of geometric patterns picked out in the spaces left by the iron framework. The restaurant is a window on Paris, its tables facing out over a memorable rooftop panorama, the perfect backdrop for my ‘Tea Time” sandwich, supplemented by other little franglais delicacies, a cookie aux pralines roses and a scone cranberries au chocolat.   

 

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The service was understated, yet impeccable. I’d ordered a coffee (alas, not very tea-time) and was just looking at the nearly empty cup, wondering how to enjoy the last frothy mouthful with without doing anything inelegant, when a waiter appeared from nowhere, discreetly produced a spoon and smiled. “Madame would be needing this, perhaps?” Indeed. Merci, Monsieur. He had noticed it was missing, understood my dilemma and solved it, all before I had noticed him at all. Perusing the menu with its enticing, Asian feel – duck salad with mango, crab soup with coconut milk, satay sauce, soba noodles – I’d be very tempted to go back for lunch one day.

Next, I wanted to go to the Galeries Lafayette too, another of the grands magasins. It opened in 1895 as a magasin de nouveautés, a “novelty shop,” selling haberdashery and word soon spread that it was a treasure trove. By 1912 it was so popular that a grand new store was built and it soon became the talk of Paris. Its central staircase was inspired by the one at the Opera, no less, and its stunning 43 meter central dome, was – is – a thing of beauty, its wrought-iron framework filled with stained glass in jeweled colors. Everything is built around a central circular space and to stand looking across it from any floor is to see rows of glittering alcoves on each floor, all sparkling like theater boxes.   

If I hadn’t already enjoyed Le Tea Time, I’d have gone to the 2nd floor café, Vue sur la Coupole, where the tables overlook the centre of the shop.  But instead, I went up to the 6th floor bookshop and was surprised to find that I could buy a Paris Pratique book of maps of each arrondissement for only 5 Euros, when I had noticed it in street kiosks earlier that day for double that.  So, not everything there is expensive!  And the selection in the ‘Books about Paris’ section was the best I’d seen anywhere.  Another prejudice gone!  This was more than just a shop full of luxury items at inflated prices.     

On the way out, I discovered something else which surprised me. Galéries Lafayette has a Wellness Center. A big sign near one of the exits informed me that relaxing options like yoga, massages, hammam were on offer, as were skincare treatments, along with distinctly more medical, not to mention sinister-sounding, procedures like drainage lymphatique and cryothéraphie. And, this being 2024, of course there was also un bootcamp.   

And yet, in a way none of this was all that strange. The Opéra district has long attracted those who wanted to keep right up to date. The Opera was spanking new in 1875, the cupolas at Printemps and Galéries Lafayette were the cutting-edge technology of their day and so why wouldn’t I find such a 21st-century establishment as a health and fitness center here today? With its up-to-the-minute shopping opportunities, its street cafés and its top-class entertainment at the Opéra Garnier, I had found modern equivalents of all the things crowds flocked here for in 1875.