Initially estimated at two years, the duration planned for the work on the stage cage of the Opéra Garnier has been extended to five years. If the start of construction on the Palais is still announced in the summer of 2027, the theater room will only be accessible again from 2032. Consequently, for the sake of preserving the cultural offering, the Opéra Bastille will only be able to begin its modernization work in 2033, three years after the scheduled date.
In recent months, the infrastructures of the Palais Garnier have been the subject of technical assessments, which concluded that there was a need to deepen the lead treatment protocol within the stage cage, particularly due to a strengthening of standards in this area. A so-called essential recommendation to ensure the durability of equipment. Originally, the modernization work planned as part of the “New Era, New Air” project, publicly revealed in September 2025 by former Minister of Culture Rachida Dati, was to end in 2029 at the Opéra Garnier, and begin in 2030 at the Opéra Bastille.
If the public should soon find the eclectic facade of the famous Palace of Charles Garnier, covered for three years by huge advertising panels, the spaces reserved for heritage visits could be made inaccessible for at least two years, due to the work. A detail which suggests a significant operating loss, while these activities generate 13 million euros per year. And which is added to the 600 million euros estimated for the total project by 2037, including the Garnier, Bastille sites, the Berthier workshops and the Dance School in Nanterre, the financing of which is based on a mix of public and private funds, with the support of patrons such as Chanel and the BNP Paribas Foundation.
The extent of the renovation is the result of several decades of neglect, which saw the slow deterioration of the Garnier and Bastille buildings. In 2024, the Court of Auditors highlighted in a report that neither of the two buildings had been the subject of significant structural work. The cause, in particular, is the stagnation of regular investments: between 2015 and 2023, the operating subsidy allocated to the Paris National Opera (OnP) increased from 95 to 100 million euros, excluding the Covid years. An insufficient increase, which did not allow establishments to cover their maintenance needs, while fixed costs were increasing.
Alexander Neef, general director of the OnP, seems to take into consideration the mistakes of the past: “If we have to take this step today, it is to avoid having to undertake a new project in a few years”he declared to theAFP. The renovation plan aims to strengthen security and modernize the buildings of the four sites of the public establishment while respecting the requirements linked to the ecological transition. The work that will take place at the Dance School and Ateliers Berthier meets more modest objectives related to the maintenance of the premises.
The Paris Opera company, placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture, has resided at the Palais Garnier since the building’s inauguration in 1875. Aside from shows, nearly 500,000 visitors per year come to admire the ceiling of the performance hall painted by Marc Chagall in 1964, making it one of the most visited Parisian monuments. For more than a century, it was the sole seat of the National Opera, until the creation in 1989 of the Opéra Bastille, designed by the Uruguayan-Canadian architect Carlos Ott as part of the Grands Travaux led by François Mitterrand. The Berthier workshops, created between 1895 and 1898 as decor stores for the Paris Opera, today host a performance hall for the Théâtre de l’Odéon. In 1987, the dance school which trains future Opera dancers moved to Nanterre. Although the closure of Garnier and Bastille is not expected to overlap, the public establishment is planning off-site programming in several Parisian theaters, including the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and the Théâtre du Châtelet.
