10 Euros Opéra Garnier

The Palais Garnier took fourteen years to build and was famously abandoned mid-construction when funds collapsed under Napoleon III — only completed in 1875 under the Third Republic, by which point its original patron had been dead for two years. Charles Garnier himself had to purchase his own ticket on opening night; he had not been invited by the new administration.

This issue belongs to Monnaie de Paris' long-running monuments series. Collector fodder, largely, but the Garnier subject draws genuine crossover interest from architecture and opera communities outside the usual numismatic market.