Note 188 — CHAPTER 8 SECOND EMPIRE PARIS, UNITED ITALY, AND IMPERIAL-AND-ROYAL VIENNA

It is curious that there should be uncertainty about the authorship of a complex so central to the building activity of its era. The Grand Hotel which occupies the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens to the left of the Opéra was by the team responsible 449for the Hôtel des Chemins de Fer at the other end of the avenue (see Note [187]). Pinkney in Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris, the latest to discuss the subject, gives credit for all the façades around the Place de l’Opéra to Rohault; Hautecoeur assigns the rounded pavilions opposite the front of the Opéra to Blondel and mentions no other architect. Whoever was responsible, Garnier felt they were much too tall and confining for his Opéra.