While most of his attention was devoted to restorations, Viollet-le-Duc designed and built a number of private residences and new buildings in Paris. He also participated in the most important competition of the period, for the new Paris Opera. There were one hundred seventy-one projects proposed in the original competition, presented the 1855 Paris Universal Exposition. A jury of noted architects narrowed it down to five, including projects from Viollet-le-Duc, Charles Rohault de Fleury and Charles Garnier, age thirty-five. The favorites of the Emperor and Empress were de Fleury and Viollet-le-Duc, but both were eliminated in the next round. Viollet-le-Duc was not a good loser, and he dismissed Garnier's style. Garnier wrote of his rival in 1869: "Monsieur Viollet-le-Duc has produced much, but his best works without doubt are his restorations...One hesitates to appreciate his personal works. You cannot find any personality in them, only compromise. He is broken by archeology and crushed by the weight of the past. If it is difficult to learn, it is even more difficult to forget."