Les Invalides

Les Invalides began in 1671 as Louis XIV’s vast hospice and retirement home for wounded soldiers, a statement that royal power carried obligations to those who fought in its wars. Built by Libéral Bruant and later crowned by Jules Hardouin-Mansart’s gilded Dome Church (1677–1706), the complex binds army, faith, and state into a single ceremonial landscape of courtyards and chapels. Since Napoleon’s remains were brought here in 1840, it has also served as a national shrine, while the Army Museum frames France’s military memory across the centuries.