The story
At the Salon of 1806, Ingres showed the new emperor frozen on his throne, pale and waxy, swathed in ermine and gold, a sceptre in one hand and the hand of justice in the other. Visitors found it bizarre, and one critic asked how a painter with so much talent could produce such a bad picture. The portrait went into storage. In 1832 it was sent to the Invalides, the veterans' hospital Louis XIV built on the Left Bank of Paris, and it hangs there still, in the Musée de l'Armée.
The museum took its present form in 1905, when an artillery museum with roots in the Revolution merged with a historical army museum. Today it holds around 500,000 objects. The early galleries are lined with plate armour, including suits made for French kings, and the arms and armour collection ranks among the largest in the world. From there the story runs from Louis XIV to Napoleon III, through both world wars, and ends in a multimedia space devoted to Charles de Gaulle.
Napoleon is everywhere here. His grey frock coat and one of his bicorne hats are on display, and so is Vizir, the Arabian horse he rode, preserved and mounted. The museum also looks after the Dôme des Invalides, where the emperor has lain since 1861 in a red quartzite sarcophagus set in an open crypt beneath the gilded cupola.
