Jean-Louis Charles Garnier (; 6 November 1825 – 3 August 1898) was a French architect, perhaps best known as the architect of the Palais Garnier and the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. Early life Charles Garnier was born Jean-Louis Charles Garnier on 6 November 1825 in Paris, on the Rue Mouffetard, in the present-day 5th arrondissement. His father, Jean" André Garnier, 1796–1865, who was originally from Sarthe, a department of the French region of Pays de la Loire, had worked as a blacksmith, wheelwright, and coachbuilder before settling down in Paris to work in a horse-drawn carriage rental business. He married Felicia Colle, daughter of a captain in the French Army. Later in life Garnier would all but ignore the fact that he was born of humble origins, preferring to claim Sarthe as his birthplace. Education Garnier became an apprentice of Louis-Hippolyte Lebas, and after that a full-time student of the École royale des Beaux-Arts de Paris, beginning during 1842. He obtained the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in 1848 at age twenty-three. The subject of his final examination was entitled:"Un conservatoire des arts et métiers, avec galerie d'expositions pour les produits de l'industrie". He became a pensioner of the Académie de France à Rome from 17 January 1849 to 31 December 1853. He traveled through Greece providing him the subject of his fourth year submission, presented at the Paris Salon in 1853. He visited Greece with Edmond About and Constantinople with Théophile Gautier. He worked on the Temple of Aphaea in Aegina where he insisted on polychromy. He was named in 1874 member of the Institut de France in the architecture section of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Paris Opera On 30 December 1860 the Second Empire of Emperor Napoleon III announced a competition for the design of a new, state-funded opera house. The old opera house, located on the and known as the Salle Le Peletier, had been constructed as a temporary theatre in 1821. Street access to that theatre was greatly constricted; and after an attempted assassination of Napoleon III at the theatre's entrance on 14 January 1858, it was decided to build a new opera house with a separate, more secure entrance for the head of state. Applicants were given a month to submit entries. There were two phases to the competition, and Garnier was one of about 170 entrants in the first phase. He was awarded the fifth-place