Paris Opera

Actually this looks a lot nicer than it was in the rain on a wet autumn evening.

The Paris Opera constructed for Napoleon IIi and the Empress Eugenie in the 1860s. It was part of the radical reshaping of Paris which still defines rhe city scape with Baron Haussmann's wide boulevards.

They are said to allow clear fields of fire for cannon.

Napoleon III was flung out after the lost to the Prussians in 1870. He dies in exile in Chislehurst, not far from where his predecessor Louis Philippe had been exiled to Esher!

The formerEmpress Eugenie survived until 1920.