Les Invalides

Landmark · Invalides / Faubourg Saint-Germain (7th)Paris,France

A walled Paris complex built to get Louis XIV's wounded soldiers off the streets, where Napoleon lies in a well sunk below the church floor.

Les Invalides is a walled complex of five courtyards under a gilded dome, and Napoleon lies in a pit below the church floor so that everyone looks down at him. You come in from the north into a paved courtyard 102 metres long, bronze cannon standing along it under two floors of arcades, the dome closing the far end. Behind the high altar a doorway leads down to a white marble gallery level with the sarcophagus, sunk in a round well six metres below the floor, with twelve stone figures of Victory around it. The place was built to get wounded soldiers off the streets. Veterans of Louis XIV's wars were begging on the bridges, so a royal edict ordered a home for them: dormitories, workshops and an infirmary with 2,140 beds, holding close to four thousand men at its fullest. That is still what it is. About a hundred disabled veterans live here today, in wards you cannot enter, and the long courtyard you walked in through is where France holds its state funerals. Napoleon arrived a great deal later than the buildings standing round him.

Worth knowing

Good to know

See the dome from place Vauban — that side is the church's own front, and at 107 metres the tallest dome in Paris; the long north front belongs to the veterans' home.
Come back when the sun is low — the gold leaf was renewed in 1989, and the dome still catches the last light long after the grey courtyard below has fallen into shadow.
Look for the wolf above the courtyard's east side — Louvois, the war minister, ran the works and reputedly signed them with a pun on his name: loup voit, a wolf that sees.
Get to the rail above the tomb early — coach groups arrive through the morning, and by midday the ring of people around the opening is two rows deep.
Walk into the courtyard and the plain church without paying — only the domed church with the tomb needs a ticket, and ceremonies close the courtyard now and then.

Things to do

1
Read his will, then go down to the tomb
Behind the high altar, two bronze figures stand on either side of a doorway, holding the emperor's crown and orb. Above the doorway is carved a line from his will, in which he asked to rest beside the Seine, among the French people. Go through the doorway and down the stairs. You come out on a white marble gallery that runs level with the sarcophagus, and twelve stone figures of Victory stand around it.
2
Tilt your head back under the dome before you look down
Stand under the dome and look straight up. The stone shell opens in the middle onto a second dome painted above it, showing Saint Louis, the king the church is named for, handing his sword to Christ. Charles de La Fosse painted it when the church was new. The light on it comes from windows you cannot see from the floor.
3
Walk the cannon line and find the dolphins on the barrels
Bronze guns stand in rows along the east and west sides of the courtyard, sixty of them, covering French artillery from Louis XIV to Napoleon III. On the older barrels the lifting handles are cast as dolphins. Then look up to the first-floor gallery on the south side, where a small bronze Napoleon stands in his greatcoat.
4
Stand under the captured flags in the veterans' church
Walk into the plain church on the north side of the dome and look up at the ceiling. Flags and standards taken from beaten armies hang in rows overhead, many faded to almost nothing. The architect Pierre Fontaine proposed them here instead of the Italian paintings Napoleon wanted.