Napoleon's Tomb

The red quartzite sarcophagus rests beneath the golden dome of Les Invalides. Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile on Saint Helena in eighteen twenty-one, but his remains returned to Paris two decades later during the Return of the Ashes. King Louis Philippe organized the elaborate procession to bolster his own standing by reclaiming the Emperor's legend. Six coffins nested within one another protect the body, buried deep in the crypt below the feet of visitors who peer down from the circular gallery above.