General Information

L’Opéra Bastille (Bastille Opera) is a modern opera house that seats 2,723, located in the 12th arrondissement of Paris. It’s the home base of the Opéra national de Paris and was designed to replace the Palais Garnier. The idea of constructing the new facility came from the president François Mitterrand.

Additional Information

Mitterrand dusted off the concept from the 1960s, which was mainly about bringing the highbrow culture to the masses. So he held a competition for the architects, who responded with over 700 projects. Construction began with the demolition of the Gare de la Bastille, which was a historic train station that worked for more than a hundred years. The opera’s inauguration took place in 1989, on the 200th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille.