Les Invalides

Les Invalides, an extensive complex of 17th-century structures and courtyards in Paris designed for the care and housing of disabled veterans and as a place of worship. Parts of Les Invalides were later converted into museums and into tombs for Napoleon I and others. Situated on the Left Bank of the Seine, the complex faces a gently sloping esplanade, about 1,470 feet (450 meters) in length and 810 feet (250 meters) in breadth, that ends at the Quai d’Orsay and the Alexandre III Bridge.

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King Louis XIV ordered the building of Les Invalides in recognition of the sacrifices made by the soldiers who fought in his wars. Most of the buildings for the care and housing of veterans were completed in five years (1671–76) by the architect Libéral Bruant. However, he had difficulty designing the church that was to serve both the residents and the king. Bruant’s nave eventually became the soldiers’ chapel (Église des Soldats). At the suggestion of the architect and designer Pierre Fontaine, the nave was draped with enemy banners captured by victorious French armies. The architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart (best known for the Palace of Versailles) was brought in to design the royal chapel, called the Dome Church (Église du Dôme). The dome exterior is wrapped in gold leaf, and the interior is decorated with a fresco by Charles de La Fosse depicting Louis IX (St. Louis) in the act of presenting his sword to Christ. The two chapels were linked by an oval sanctuary open to both. The resulting hybrid church was dedicated to Louis IX, France’s most venerated soldier-king.

On July 14, 1789, the revolutionary mob that stormed the Bastille prison used firearms and cannon that they had looted from the Hôtel des Invalides earlier that day. In the 19th century, the floor of the Dome Church was removed and the crypt converted into the tomb of Napoleon I. The tomb, with its red porphyry sarcophagus and five nested coffins, was designed by the Italian-born architect Louis-Tullius-Joachim Visconti and not completed until 1861, some 40 years after Napoleon’s death. Also interred in the Dome Church are Napoleon’s son Napoleon II, his brothers Joseph and Jérôme Bonaparte, and several marshals and generals of the French army. The crypt of the soldiers’ chapel, called the Cave of Governors (Caveau des Gouverneurs), holds the remains of other notables, including Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, author of the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise.”

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Paris: The Invalides of Paris

Since 1905 Les Invalides has also housed the Army Museum (Musée de l’Armée), which holds a large collection of arms, armor, paintings, and decorations from all periods of French history up to the end of World War II. Two smaller collections on the same premises are the Museum of the Order of the Liberation (Musée de l’Ordre de la Libération), dedicated to France’s heroes of World War II, and the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, a collection of relief models, mostly of fortified cities, constructed between the 17th and 19th centuries as visual aids for military commanders.

A military hospital is still in operation at Les Invalides, and the headquarters of the military governor of Paris are there. Moreover, the soldiers’ chapel still functions as a Roman Catholic house of worship, now called the Cathédrale St.-Louis des Invalides.