Places, museums, monuments

The main museum of Sedan is located in the largest castle of Europe with an area of 35,000 m². The battle of Sedan, which took place on 1 September 1870, saw the defeat of the army of Marshall MacMahon, who was beaten and made prisoner by the troups of the royal prince of Saxony. Napoleon […]

Of the property where Gustave Flaubert lived and worked from 1843 until his death, all that remains is this garden pavilion facing a factory-littered Rouen landscape. In the last century, however, Flaubert's house was situated in a particularly agreeable location, on a hillside overlooking the Seine, and a watercolour by Rochegrosse (on show in the […]

It was on Aix Island where Napoleon spent his last days on French soil, July 12 to 15, 1815, before embarking for his exile. Settled into the commander's house that he himself had ordered constructed in 1808, the Emperor composed the rough draft of the famous letter that was placed under the protection of the […]

After Plombières, Vichy was the other great spa in fashion under the Second Empire. Already in 1799, Laetitia Bonaparte, in the company of her son, Louis, took the waters of this spa which was known since Gallo-Roman antiquity. During the First Empire, the “Parc des Sources” (Park of Springs) was layed out on the personal […]

The Vascoeuil Castle is the home of the only Michelet Museum in France. The historian was the victim of censorship under the Second Empire because of his liberal positions. The courses he taught at the College of France were abolished starting in 1851, that is to say, one year before the proclamation of the Empire, […]

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 […]

On 1 March 1815, on his return from Elba, Napoleon landed in Golfe-Juan with a small band of 1100 loyal soldiers. And from here he set out on the extraordinary adventure that was to lead to the return to power two and a half weeks later, 20 March, with his triumphal entry into the Tuileries […]

It was at the Military School in Brienne, in the Champagne region of France, that Napoleon Bonaparte spent part of his youth, from May 1779 to October 1784. Brienne had been chosen by Count de Saint-Germain, the Secretary of State for War, as one of the twelve preparatory schools for the main Military Academy in […]

Alongside the Tuileries, Saint-Cloud and Fontainebleau, Compiègne was one of the palaces where the imperial couple and the court regularly resided. Indeed it was one of the preferred houses because of the freer lifestyle which reigned, in that respect for etiquette weighed less heavily there. Compiègne also played a key role in lives of the […]

In 1763, in a truly beautiful spot overlooking the Caribbean Sea, was born a child with a most extraordinary future ahead of her: for this little girl was none other than Marie-Joseph-Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, who was to become Josephine, Empress of the French.Josephine spent the first sixteen years of her life in the […]