The theatre began with an 1838 project of architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff for a rotunda in the Champs Elysees. Inaugurated in 1839, this structure was integrated with other Hittorff buildings for the Exposition Universelle (1855) and destroyed the following year. A new replacement panorama, Le Panorama National, was designed by architect Gabriel Davioud at the corner of the Avenue d’Antin (now Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt) and the Champs-Élysées.
In December 1893, the rotunda became the Palais de Glace (Ice Palace), one of the most popular attractions of Belle Epoque Paris.
In the post-war years, the Theatre du Rond-Point was one of the principal venues—along with the Theatre Marigny and the Theatre de l’Odeon—where the Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Louis Barrault Company introduced the world to many of the plays of Jean Giraudoux, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Anouilh, and Samuel Beckett.
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