Places, museums, monuments

The Château de Saint-Cloud was the scene of some of the significant moments in French 19th century history, and most notably in Napoleonic history in that it saw the rise and fall of both the First and Second Empires. Bonaparte seized power there in his coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire, and the Empire was proclaimed […]

After his schooling at Brienne, the young Bonaparte went to the Paris Ecole Militaire military school from 22nd October 1784 to 28th October 1785. He left as a second class lieutenant in the artillery, with a commission to join the La Fère regiment in Valence. In 1795 Bonaparte came back to the school to establish […]

One of the world's best-known historical sites, Piazza San Marco is surrounded by some remarkable monuments – the Basilica (originally the Doge's private chapel!), the Torre dell'Orologio, the Procuratie Nuove and the Procuratie Vecchie, Sansovino's Libreria Marciana, and finally the Ala Napoleonica which today houses the Museo Correr. Towards the end of 1805, Venice became […]

On the Ile de la Cité stands today one of the oldest and most prestigious official buildings in Paris, the Palais de Justice law courts. As far back as Roman times the site was used as a place of government, and this example was followed by the succeeding Merovingian and Capetian dynasties. As the kings […]

Created during the Empire, the Bois de Boulogne was a milestonefor garden and park construction in the French capital. In fact itmarked the starting point, in 1852, of the policy of the developmentof the green spaces in Paris. And the instigator of the project wasNapoleon III himself. The emperor took an interest in all the […]

The construction of the Palatine chapel, more commonly known as the 'Imperial Chapel', was the result of the last wishes of Cardinal Fesch: 'On the sale of my Great Gallery of paintings, my heirs should take the sum of two hundred thousand francs for the construction of a church in  Ajaccio…in which should be built […]

In 1860, the old village of Monceau (or Mousseaux) near Paris was annexed to the capital along with eleven other communes. The Monceau plain, which in those days was an immense wasteland, bordered on its outer sides by the Fermiers généraux farmland, was soon to become a giant housing development – not even “la Folie […]

On St Helena, as he lay dying Napoleon remembered the church of his childhood: 'If they forbid my corpse, as they have forbidden my body, a small piece of land in which to be laid, I desire to be buried with my ancestors in Ajaccio cathedral in Corsica'. This quotation, engraved on a marble plaque […]

It was as a result of Napoleon III's policy of creating, in Paris, urban green space at the four points of the compass that the Montsouris park was built on the plain of the same name between 1867 and 1878. The name Montsouris is a corruption of the word Moquesouris (mouse mocker), the ancient name […]

Napoleon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph, only son of the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie, met his death in South Africa in 1879 in tragic circumstances. In commemoration of this event, the province of KwaZulu created in 1995, a 'Napoleonic route' dedicated to the Prince Impérial. After the disaster at Sedan, the Imperial family […]