Former site of the Salle Le Peletier

This bird's eye view is alas of the wrong spot. The Boulevard Hausmann - the huge road at the top - was built in the 1850s, and the Salle Peletier survived untouched until its destruction by fire in 1873. The theatre was bounded on threes sides by roads that survive, two with changed names, to this day. One is, unsurprisingly, Rue Peletier, onto which the 135 metre-long theatre fronted. But its main side wall was on the Rue Pinon, which, following the death in Paris of the long-term resident, was renamed Rue Rossini, and is still there, some 400-odd metres off this shot to the north. The back wall was on what is now Rue Drouot. The long southern wall was in garden grounds some 250 metres north of and parallel to the Boulevard Hausmann, the construction of which merely ate into the opera's grounds which had formerly stretched right down to the Boulevard des Italiens - the huge road at the bottom - via long entrance galleries

Stephen Jay-Taylor