An afternoon 'with' Napoleon....

In my last post I wrote about our busy Sunday here in Brisbane. Well for something completely different I am now going to write a post about an afternoon in late April this year, when DH and I visited the Les Invalides in Paris.  This national war museum is huge and in the hours that we spent there, we only saw a small fraction of the collections. This was late in our holiday and I notice that we didn't take anywhere near the number of photos that we took earlier on our trip.

The museum consists of a number of buildings which were used as a home and hospital for aged and unwell soldiers. Louis xiv designated the buildings for this purpose way back in 1670. Of course its role is now a museum which houses so much French military history. It is also the burial place of French war heroes. 

We came to this museum to see the 'resting place' of this famous Frenchman...his statue is there between the columns...

You can see that gold covered dome from all around...note the lovely details on the building in the foreground...

Warning: Lots of sarcophagi photos! lol

Oh and statues too, of course! lol

The building which is described as the chapel...looked more like a small cathedral!

DH had told me about a very impressive resting place which he knew was in one of the large and ornate buildings in this museum... in the next photo I'm standing at a circle of magnificent marble looking down several feet below at a sarcophagus made of red marble...I'm stunned at the size of this object!

Yes! It's Napoleon's tomb...what a resting place he eventually got!

We then took the stairs to get down to the level that the sarcophagus was on...

 DH looks like he's standing right near it...but he's behind a barrier of white marble, some metres away...

We spent a while just looking at this behemoth of a coffin/sarcophagus...then off we went to marvel at more of the opulence in this place...

Look how tiny the people look!

 I loved the stained  glass windows which featured 'long hexies' shapes :-)

 And so many marble coffins...

 Two views of the celebrated Foch's grave...

Another Napoleon...Jerome Napoleon!

Napoleon had proclaimed himself Emperor thus starting a dynasty I guess...

And yet another one! Joseph Napoleon...who was Napoleon 1's brother crowned King of Naples by his famous brother.

In another part of the museum, we saw full sized mannequins dressed in the various army uniforms that were worn over the centuries of wars and campaigns. These were behind glass so decent photos were difficult to get...but there were so many...the French must have been continually at war for centuries! lol

Here is one poor photo but it gives an idea of what I was describing.

There were many, many paintings of battle scenes and  individual portraits, such as this one of Napoleon...

And one diorama which,was a mock up of Napoleon's 'quarters' during battle, caught my interest. Don't you just love his hat! lol...And the writing desk that was obviously carried around on his campaigns!

Yet another section had displays of weapons, including vehicles...

DH and I spent hours in this fascinating place and I also had a wonderful time in the gift shop there :-)