Visiting Napoleon and Josephine Sites in Paris and its Environs - A List Created by Savvy Mom Ruth
Paget
There
are many places that you can visit in Paris and outside it to learn about
Napoleon and his wife Josephine Beauharnais:
Ecole Militaire
Napoleon
was from a family of minor nobility on the island of Corsica. He attended Ecole Militaire due to his minor
nobility status (aristocracy with no money).
The elite military officers attended school at St. Cyr outside Paris.
Rueil Malmaison
This
small château was the home of Empress Josephine Beauharnais – daughter of a rich
French planter from the Caribbean.
She
loved fashion and sometimes bought the same gown twice from unscrupulous
salesman, who told her how good she looked in it.
Napoleon
had a room at Rueil that looks like an army field tent. He ate his meals standing up, so he could read
while eating or examine maps or charts.
Josephine’s
bedroom is wall-papered with lava red, textured fabric. A large, round mirror is above the bed.
Her
rose garden is open to the public. There
are fox hunts with French horn players in costume in the park next to the château
sometimes.
Fontainebleau Château
(South of Paris)
Napoleon
lived here and took over a suite of rooms that Louis XVI used (next to the
Gallery of François 1er).
He
could go through a hidden doorway behind a curtain from his bedroom to his
private library.
Thomas
Jefferson had a similar set up at his home in Monticello outside
Charlottesville, Virginia. Many castles
do have secret doors, so Thomas Jefferson may have been familiar with them from
his diplomatic work in France.
The
winged staircase in back of the château is called the “Escalier des Adieux” where he said
farewell to his troops during one of his banishments.
Les Invalides
Many
people take pictures of this spectacular gold-domed building from the Alexander
III Bridge with rearing golden horses without really knowing what it is.
Les
Invalides is a military hospital that is still in use. Napoleons’s poryphory coffin stands on a high
pedestal in a round room with the names of his most important battles engraved
on the circular walls around it.
The Louvre
Jacques-Louis
David’s historical paintings of Napoleon’s Coronation and Empress Josephine’s
in the Louvre commemorate his contributions to French Civil Administration that
are still in place today.
He
crowned himself, because he was self-made.
He loved Egypt and commissioned furniture glorifying its virtues. It was a stratified society with slaves, but
everyone ate.
Ancient
Greece and the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire all had slaves as well. Not everyone ate well in these civilizations,
though. Soldiers often had to pillage
for food.
The
French do not suffer in silence, but if you mess up food, especially for young
children – Redrum as the twins said in the movie The Shining will happen.
He
also knew that Cleopatra was a Ptolemy (Greek), daughter of General Ptolemy. She did not want to be mistreated by being dragged
through the streets of Rome by Caesar Augustus as a way to end the 3,000 year old
empire of ancient Egypt. She committed
suicide by letting herself be bit by an asp. (Greeks still hate Italy to this day for treating a Greek this way.)
His
archaeological team led by the archeologist Champillon brought back many
treasures from Egypt and placed them in the Louvre, which you can still see
today.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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