Richard Phené Spiers

“ Of Garnier’s other works, the most remarkable are the Casino at Monte Carlo, the Bischoffsheim villa at Bordighera, the Hôtel du Cercle de la Librairie in Paris; and, among tombs, those of the musicians Bizet, Offenbach, Massé and Duprato. In 1874 he was elected a member of the Institute of France, and after passing through the grades of chevalier, officer and commander of the Legion of Honour, received in 1895 the rank of grand officer, a high distinction that had never before been granted to an architect. ”

“ GARNIER, JEAN LOUIS CHARLES (1825–1898) , French architect, was born in Paris on the 6th of November 1825. He was educated in a primary school, and it was intended that he should pursue his father’s craft, that of a wheelwright. ”

“ His principal works were the measured drawings of the Forum of Trajan and the temple of Vesta in Rome, and the temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli. In the fifth year of his travelling studentship he went to Athens and measured the temple at Aegina, subsequently working out a complete restoration of it, with its polychromatic decoration, which was published as a monograph in 1877. The elaborate set of drawings which he was commissioned by the duc de Luynes to make of the tombs of the house of Anjou were not published, owing to the death of his patron ”