Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, on place de l’Odéon since 1782

The Théâtre de l’Odéon on place de l’Odéon was inaugurated by Marie-Antoinette on 9 April 1782 to house the company of the Théâtre-Français. Marie-Joseph Peyre and Charles De Wailly built it on the garden of the Hôtel de Condé, with a semicircular square where five streets meet; it was the first Italian-style hall with a seated pit.

On 27 April 1784 Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage de Figaro triumphed there, and Talma debuted in 1787. The theatre took the name Odéon in 1796 and burned in 1799 and 1818. Sarah Bernhardt played Le Passant there in 1869 and Ruy Blas in 1872, and L’Arlésienne premiered in 1885.

André Antoine ran it from 1906 to 1914. In 1959, renamed Théâtre de France, it was entrusted to Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud; André Masson painted its ceiling in 1965, and students occupied it in May 1968. In 1983 Giorgio Strehler founded the Théâtre de l’Europe there, whose name it keeps.

Listed as a historic monument since 1947, the Odéon is one of France’s six national theatres, run by Julien Gosselin since 2024. In the 6th arrondissement, it stages European repertoire and new work, with a second venue, the Ateliers Berthier, in the 17th arrondissement.