Napoleon's Tomb

Napoleon Bonaparte rests beneath the massive gilded dome of Les Invalides, a building originally commissioned by King Louis XIV as a hospital and retirement home for war veterans. The site was chosen to transform the emperor from a fallen exile into a monumental symbol of French national pride. His remains were returned to France from the island of Saint Helena in eighteen forty, nearly two decades after his death, in a massive state event known as the return of the ashes. The tomb itself was not completed for another twenty years, finally opening to the public in eighteen sixty-one.