Description
Les Invalides is the monumental complex in Paris's 7th arrondissement built by Louis XIV as a home and hospital for his old soldiers. Today it is France's great military site: a museum, a necropolis, and the tomb of Napoleon under a golden dome.
The golden Dôme des Invalides, designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, is 107 meters tall, the highest church in Paris. It has a double dome, gilded with gold leaf, and its painted cupola is by Charles de La Fosse: a lower dome, open in the middle, makes it look like the sky.
Beneath it, in an open crypt ringed by twelve pillars with figures celebrating his deeds, lies Napoleon's tomb: a sarcophagus of red quartzite on a base of green granite. The crypt also keeps tombs of great soldiers such as Turenne, Vauban and Marshals Foch and Lyautey.
The Musée de l'Armée, created in 1905, shows arms and armor from antiquity to the 20th century in seven departments. The Musée des Plans-Reliefs keeps about 150 models of fortified towns, begun in 1668 for Louis XIV's minister of war.
The old veterans had their own church, the Saint-Louis cathedral, the other half of the same building, hung with captured enemy flags. They had to attend mass every day. Its organ was made between 1679 and 1687.
On the morning of 14 July 1789, a crowd forced its way into Les Invalides and carried off its cannons and some 32,000 muskets. A few hours later those weapons were pointed at the Bastille. The Revolution had found its arsenal in a retirement home.
It was born in 1670, when the king ordered a home and hospital for the veterans of his many wars. By 1676 its facade on the Seine ran for 196 meters, around fifteen courtyards, the main one, the Cour d'Honneur, built for military parades.
But the king also wanted something for himself: a private royal chapel under the dome. The dome then became a temple of military glory. In 1840 King Louis Philippe brought back Napoleon himself, from Saint Helena.
His tomb took twenty years, and it was his nephew, Napoleon III, who laid him there in 1861.
Don't miss
• Napoleon's tomb.
• The painted cupola.
• The Army Museum.
• The relief maps.
Did you know?
• Napoleon's "ashes" are no ashes: he was never cremated, yet his return is still called the retour des cendres.
• Rouget de Lisle, author of La Marseillaise, lies in the governors' crypt.
• The 2024 Olympics held archery and cycling events on its grounds.
The golden Dôme des Invalides, designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, is 107 meters tall, the highest church in Paris. It has a double dome, gilded with gold leaf, and its painted cupola is by Charles de La Fosse: a lower dome, open in the middle, makes it look like the sky.
Beneath it, in an open crypt ringed by twelve pillars with figures celebrating his deeds, lies Napoleon's tomb: a sarcophagus of red quartzite on a base of green granite. The crypt also keeps tombs of great soldiers such as Turenne, Vauban and Marshals Foch and Lyautey.
The Musée de l'Armée, created in 1905, shows arms and armor from antiquity to the 20th century in seven departments. The Musée des Plans-Reliefs keeps about 150 models of fortified towns, begun in 1668 for Louis XIV's minister of war.
The old veterans had their own church, the Saint-Louis cathedral, the other half of the same building, hung with captured enemy flags. They had to attend mass every day. Its organ was made between 1679 and 1687.
On the morning of 14 July 1789, a crowd forced its way into Les Invalides and carried off its cannons and some 32,000 muskets. A few hours later those weapons were pointed at the Bastille. The Revolution had found its arsenal in a retirement home.
It was born in 1670, when the king ordered a home and hospital for the veterans of his many wars. By 1676 its facade on the Seine ran for 196 meters, around fifteen courtyards, the main one, the Cour d'Honneur, built for military parades.
But the king also wanted something for himself: a private royal chapel under the dome. The dome then became a temple of military glory. In 1840 King Louis Philippe brought back Napoleon himself, from Saint Helena.
His tomb took twenty years, and it was his nephew, Napoleon III, who laid him there in 1861.
Don't miss
• Napoleon's tomb.
• The painted cupola.
• The Army Museum.
• The relief maps.
Did you know?
• Napoleon's "ashes" are no ashes: he was never cremated, yet his return is still called the retour des cendres.
• Rouget de Lisle, author of La Marseillaise, lies in the governors' crypt.
• The 2024 Olympics held archery and cycling events on its grounds.