The residence of Eugène de Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy, the villa of Monza was the Saint-Cloud of the Napoleonic kingdom. It is also the town that keeps the iron crown.

Historical context

The villa was built from 1777 to 1780 by Giuseppe Piermarini — the architect of La Scala — for Archduke Ferdinand, Austrian governor of Lombardy. Passing to the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, it became the country residence of the viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais, who governed the country in his stepfather's name.

Eugène enlarged it and had an immense English park laid out around it, one of the largest in Europe, together with a model farm. The apartments were refurnished in the Empire taste by Milanese workshops; there he entertained, hunted and handled the kingdom's business away from the heat of Milan. Napoleon stayed there during his Italian journeys.

Monza also has symbolic importance. Since the early Middle Ages its cathedral has kept the iron crown of the Lombard kings, the ring reputedly forged from a nail of the Cross. It was that crown Napoleon came for in May 1805, to place it on his own head in Milan cathedral before having it returned to Monza.

The kingdom collapsed in 1814 and the villa passed back to the Habsburgs, then to the House of Savoy. The park laid out under Eugène has housed the Monza autodrome since 1922. One of the few palace complexes designed for imperial France beyond its borders now serves as the setting for the Italian Grand Prix.