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Richard Peduzzi's model of the Opéra Garnier at Musée d'Orsay — Vertigo exhibition

Musée d'Orsay · 7e arrondissement

Vertigo: Richard Peduzzi at Orsay

Now showing6 October 2026 – 17 January 2027·€16

Marking the museum's 40th anniversary, this show revisits set designer Richard Peduzzi's original 1986 scenography for Orsay through his theatre and opera models, drawings and sculptures.

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At the far end of Orsay's great nave, the Opéra Garnier is sliced open lengthwise: a 1/25 scale section almost 5.80 metres long, made from a drawing by Charles Garnier. Beside it, a 6.50-metre model lays out the Opéra quarter as it stood in 1914, and you look down on it from above.

Both have stood there since the museum opened in 1986, arranged by the stage designer Richard Peduzzi, Patrice Chéreau's longtime collaborator. For Orsay's 40th birthday his own paintings, drawings, sculptures and set models now surround them, including those for Chéreau's Lulu at the Paris Opera in 1979. The endless walls, towers and ruins of his sets hang beside drawings he chose from the museum's collection.

If you already know the models, the new part is the theatre work around them. The extra hang leaves in January; the models stay. It's covered by the €16 timed museum ticket (€12 on Thursday evenings, open to 9:45pm; free for under-18s and EEA residents under 26).

Look for

  • The Opéra Garnier cut in half

    Look at the end of the nave for the 1/25 scale lengthwise section, nearly 5.80 m long, which opens the opera house so you see it from inside.

  • The Opéra quarter in 1914

    A 6.50-metre model of the district as Haussmann's works left it, set out so you look down on the streets from above.

  • The Lulu set models

    Peduzzi's models for Chéreau's 1979 Lulu at the Paris Opera, made in the same years he was designing Orsay's interiors.

  • Peduzzi's picks from the collection

    Look for Viollet-le-Duc's 1836 drawing of the temple of Neptune at Paestum and Le Bas's Petite Roquette prison, chosen to echo his walls and ruins.

Good for

  • Evening Visits
  • Locals Who've Seen It All
  • Nerding Out

With kids

Under-18s get in free, and the museum lists an Enfant & Cie rate of €13.

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