Hôtel des Invalides

Hôtel des Invalides in Paris opens on a frozen December day in 1840, when sixteen black horses dragged a golden carriage carrying Napoleon Bonaparte's remains through streets packed with mourners, nineteen years after his death in exile. The guide follows King Louis-Philippe's decision to bring him home, and the veterans of Austerlitz and Wagram who wept as the coffin passed through this courtyard. It also traces the building's own path from Louis XIV's hospital for wounded soldiers to the empire's monument to itself. Stand where those old soldiers once stood.