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Retrace your steps back to the Avenue des Champs-Elysées and walk up Avenue de Marigny. The Théâtre Marigny will be on your left. This site has been used as a showplace
by travelling showmen since at least 1835. After the revolution of 1848 a small theatre, the Château d’Enfer, was set up here. It was also known as the Salle Lacaze after its founder, and presented a variety of shows.
When the Salle Lacaze was forced to close down, Jacques Offenbach (composer of the famous Cancan) opened the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens in 1855. It benefitted from some of the overspill from the Universal Exposition that year. It was soon renamed the theatre Bouffes d’Été, since Offenbach was director of the ‘Bouffes d’Hiver’ in the Salle Choiseul on rue Monsigny. Offenbach premiered a number of his pieces here but the lease ran out in 1858 and it became the Théâtre Debureau. It was taken over two more times before being demolished in 1881 to make way for the current building, which was built by Charles Garnier in 1883 as a Panorama, which explains its unusual twelve-sided shape. Converted into a theatre once more in 1894, it was enlarged and modernised in 1925.
Throughout the 1930s the Théâtre Marigny was a popular venue for musical theatre, which even included some Offenbach revivals. Today it is noted for its modern French drama.
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Continue up Avenue de Marigny and turn right. The Palais de l’Elysée will be on the corner on your right at No. 55 rue du Faubourg St-Honoré. This has been the official residence of the President of the Republic since 1874. It was originally called the Hôtel d’Evreux after the man who built it in 1718, the Compte d’Evreux.
The building is a beautiful example of 18th-century French Neoclassicism, while its interior contains a series of different decorative styles, reflecting the different people who have lived in it. Napoleon’s sister Caroline lived here with her husband from 1805 to 1808 and two lovely rooms have been preserved from this period: the Salon Murat (after Caroline’s husband) and the Salon d’Argent. There is also a salle de bains (bathroom) built for the Empress Eugénie which was designed by architect Eugène Lacroix in the 1850s. General de Gaulle used to hold press conferences in the Hall of Mirrors, while the Presidential apartments on the first floor are now decorated in a more convenient modern style.
Napoleon III plotted the coup that turned him from France’s first president into its last emperor here, while some other famous residents have included Louis XV’s mistress Madame de Pompadour, Napoleon himself, and Tsar Alexander III of Russia. The rear of the palace looks out onto a beautiful English garden.
Champs-
Elysées
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