Odéon Theatre

The Odeon Theatre features a massive portico with eight Doric columns facing a small, semicircular plaza. This building replaced an earlier structure that burned down twice in its first few decades. In seventeen eighty-four, the Comedie Francaise premiered the play The Marriage of Figaro here. The royal censor had banned the work for years, fearing its sharp satire on the aristocracy. When the play finally reached the stage, the lines fueled the resentment that eventually exploded into the French Revolution.