Dôme des Invalides

A gilded dome rising 107 metres over the Left Bank, the Dôme des Invalides is the tallest church building in Paris and one of the most complete statements of French Baroque. Louis XIV commissioned it as a private royal chapel attached to the Hôtel des Invalides, the vast hospice he had founded for wounded and aged soldiers, and Jules Hardouin-Mansart drew up the design in 1676. Work took roughly three decades and the building was finished in 1706.

Mansart laid the chapel out as a Greek cross on a square plan, fronted by two stacked tiers of classical orders under a pediment. The real ingenuity lies overhead. The dome is double: an inner shell with a wide opening at its base lets worshippers look up through it to an upper painted vault, lit by windows hidden from view, so the painting seems to float in natural light. That upper scene, completed by Charles de la Fosse in 1705, shows Saint Louis offering his sword to Christ among angels. Outside, the dome is covered with gold leaf and topped by a lantern. The chapel was conceived as the royal choir of a double church, with the soldiers' church of Saint-Louis-des-Invalides as its nave; a glass partition put up in the nineteenth century now divides the two.

In 1840, after Napoleon's remains were brought back from Saint Helena, the dome was designated his resting place. Louis Visconti designed the tomb, though he did not live to see it finished, and the emperor was finally laid there in 1861. The sarcophagus of reddish-purple quartzite stands on a green granite base in an open crypt beneath the dome, ringed by a circular gallery with relief panels and statues by sculptors including James Pradier and Pierre-Charles Simart. Other military figures rest in the chapels around it: Marshal Turenne, the heart of the fortress engineer Vauban, Marshal Foch and Marshal Lyautey.

The complex sits in the 7th arrondissement, Paris's quarter of ministries, embassies and broad lawns between the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. The esplanade in front of the Invalides runs north to the river and the Pont Alexandre III.

Getting there

The Dôme des Invalides is in central Paris, in the 7th arrondissement. The nearest airport is Paris-Orly (ORY), about 14 km to the south; Paris-Charles de Gaulle is further out to the north-east. Varenne and La Tour-Maubourg Métro stations are close by, and Invalides station, served by the Métro and RER C, lies at the northern end of the esplanade.