The circular crypt
Visconti designed the tomb open from above so visitors gaze down bowing from the dome's rim — architecture that imposes reverence by force.
Livioandronico2013 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Rijksmuseum — CC0 · Gzen92 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Cette photo a été prise par André ALLIOT . — CC BY-SA 3.0
The tomb is the Invalides complex's jewel and its most-cited reason to visit — we give it its own page because many come precisely for it. Practically: one ticket, one building; the complex and museum pages complete the picture.
Tin, then iron, lead, a second lead, ebony and oak, inside the quartzite shell — a symbolic imperial rite by which the France of 1840 made her Emperor's homecoming a cosmic event.
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Beneath the highest golden dome in Paris, in an open circular crypt designed so that looking at him bows your head whether you choose it or not, lies Napoleon Bonaparte — six nested coffins sheathed in a seventh of red quartzite on a green granite base, one of the greatest funerary monuments raised to any human in modern history. The Emperor died in exile on Saint Helena in 1821; twenty years later France sailed his remains home in the solemn "Return of the Ashes," to rest where he had wished: "on the banks of the Seine, among the French people I so loved." Twelve statues of Victory guard the crypt's rim, the mosaic floor recites his triumphs from Austerlitz to Wagram, and in the surrounding chapels lie his brothers, his marshals, and France's later commanders down to Foch of the Great War. The visit itself is short and concentrated — half an hour covers tomb and Dôme church — but it comes inside the full Invalides ticket: continue into the Army Museum if time allows, or keep to the dome if the tomb is your goal.
Visconti designed the tomb open from above so visitors gaze down bowing from the dome's rim — architecture that imposes reverence by force.
A hundred metres of gold and murals overhead — Paris's tallest landmark before the Eiffel Tower, and still its most splendid church interior.
Around the Emperor: his brothers the kings of Spain and Westphalia, his son the "King of Rome," Marshal Foch — a miniature military pantheon about a single grave.
Dôme church, Les Invalides, 75007 Paris