Rome at the time of Napoleonic occupation: an exhibition in the capital city

Waiting for the Emperor. Monuments, Archaeology, and Urbanism in Napoleon’s Rome 1809-1814 is the exhibition, scheduled from December 19, 2019 to May 31, 2020 at the Napoleonic Museum in Rome, which aims to reconstruct the face of Napoleonic Rome through 50 works-some little known, others completely unpublished, with significant recoveries-from the collections of the Napoleonic Museum and the Museum of Rome at Palazzo Braschi.

In 1808 Rome was occupied by the French army. After a year the city is annexed and declared, after Paris, the second city of theNapoleonic Empire. The emperor’s son is given the title of King of Rome. The pope is taken prisoner and exiled. The Quirinal is transformed to accommodate Napoleon. For five years Rome remains waiting for an emperor who will never arrive.

The exhibition is divided into four sections:

1) Napoleon’s Rome;

2) Roman celebrations for the birth of the King of Rome;

3) Archaeological excavations;

4) The face of the city.

On display are the monumental projects that, in the name of recovering the ancient, were to characterize the new imperial Rome (statues, triumphal arches, bridges, extra-urban cemeteries and archaeological excavations). Alongside these were projects for the urban renewal of large areas of the city (promenades of the Pincian Hill, the Capitoline Hill and theFlaminia area-the “Villa Napoleon” -settlement of the banks of the Tiber), which involved Roman architects such as Camporese, Valadier and Stern, and French architects such as Berthault and Gisors.

These large-format, visually striking sheets, produced with great attention to detail and never before displayed in an exhibition, testify to a brief season of great creative effervescence, which can be traced back to French intentions to modernize and secularize the city while enhancing its millennial legacy of history and art, monumental and symbolic.

For all information you can visit the official website of the Napoleonic Museum.

Rome at the time of Napoleonic occupation: an exhibition in the capital city

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