Gio Paolo Bombarda

Gio Paolo Bombarda (Rome, c.1650 – Paris, 6 December 1712) was the founder of the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels.

Musician, councillor and treasurer to Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria in Munich, he was taken on by the court orchestra in 1680 and, in 1686, he married the daughter of the composer Ercole Bernabei.

In 1694 Bombarda and Pietro Antonio Fiocco rented the Opéra du Quai au Foin, managing it for three years.

After the Bombardment of Brussels by French troops under maréchal de Villeroy, Maximilien-Emmanuel entrusted Bombarda with the construction of a new theatre right in the heart of the city – the Théâtre sur la Monnoye, which opened in 1700.

The able financier Bombarda was thus called to the Académie in 1703 and left the elector's services to set up himself and his family in Paris in 1705, in a house on rue d'Argenteuil, not far from the Palais-Royal, where he died in 1712.