Founded by Louis XIV for his wounded soldiers, the Hôtel des Invalides has housed Napoleon's tomb beneath the Dome since 1861. The Return of the Ashes on 15 December 1840 made it the central memorial of the epic.

Historical context

Under the Empire, Les Invalides was not yet a tomb: it was a hospital and barracks where the maimed of the Grande Armée ended their days. On 15 July 1804, beneath the Dome, Napoleon personally handed out the first crosses of the Legion of Honour — two thousand decorations distributed before the veterans, in a staging that tied the new order to blood already shed.

The 1821 will was explicit: "I wish my ashes to rest on the banks of the Seine, among the French people I have loved so well." It took nineteen years. In 1840 Thiers and Louis-Philippe obtained London's permission to exhume; the Prince de Joinville, the king's son, fetched the body from Saint Helena aboard the frigate La Belle Poule. When the coffin was opened, witnesses found the body almost intact.

On 15 December 1840, in minus ten degrees, the funeral car came up the Champs-Élysées from Courbevoie to the Invalides before an immense crowd. Victor Hugo, present, described a day "magnificent and mediocre" — popular fervour and the embarrassment of a king staging a triumph for the man whose shadow threatened him.

The tomb designed by Visconti was only finished in 1861: a sarcophagus of red Karelian quartzite, often called porphyry, set on a green granite base in an open crypt seen from above — visitors must bow their heads to look at the Emperor. Twelve Victories by Pradier stand guard. Around him lie Joseph, Jérôme, the marshals, and since 1940 the King of Rome.