In Napoleon’s footsteps
In Napoleon’s footsteps
A journey through Liguria, Corsica, Sardinia and Tuscany
Esperienze di rete culturale transfrontaliera per la valorizzazione del patrimonio napoleonico
Ajaccio~Carloforte~Livorno~Lucca Massa Carrara~Pisa~Sarzana~Savona
www.napoleonsites.eu
In Napoleon’s footsteps A journey through Liguria, Corsica, Sardinia and Tuscany
Esperienze di rete culturale transfrontaliera per la valorizzazione del patrimonio napoleonico
Ajaccio~Carloforte~Livorno~Lucca Massa Carrara~Pisa~Sarzana~Savona
This book has been produced by the Publishing Department of Touring Editore on the initiative of the Province of Lucca, Province of Livorno, Province of Massa-Carrara, Province of Savona, Consortium for the promotion of Tourism of the City of Carloforte, City of Sarzana - Itinerari Culturali S.c.r.l., Ville d’Ajaccio, Province of Pisa, with funding from the European Fund for Regional Development under the Operational Programme Italy-Maritime France 2007-2013 - Project “Experiences of a cross-border cultural network for promoting the Napoleonic heritage- BONESPRIT” Texts: revision of texts derived from www.napoleonsites.eu (editorial project and creation of software by Liberologico Srl) Scientific coordination Roberta Martinelli, by Federica de Luca and Saul Stucchi
Edition sponsored by the Special Initiatives Department of Touring Editore Strada 1, pal. F, Milanofiori - 20090 (Mi) tel. 0257547509, fax 0257547503 iniziative.speciali@touringclub.com Director: Luciano Mornacchi For their courteous help, we wish to thank: the Provinces, Municipalities, Regional Offices of the MIBAC, and all the public and private institutions of the partner areas that in various ways have contributed to this guide Editing and layout: Alcos Pr&pressoffice s.r.l. - Milan www.alcoscomunicazione.com Printing and binding: Lalitotipo s.r.l. - Settimo Milanese (Mi) © 2013 Touring Editore S.r.l. - Milan www.touringclub.com Printed in January 2013 Initiative funded by the European Regional Development Fund, not to be sold until January 2018
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Esperienze di rete culturale transfrontaliera per la valorizzazione del patrimonio napoleonico
Ajaccio~Carloforte~Livorno~Lucca Massa Carrara~Pisa~Sarzana~Savona
Napoleon Bonaparte and his spirit, his dynamic reforming energy that changed the countries and peoples of Europe, seen through a project financed by the European Community, which seeks to highlight the traces that the great Corsican and the members of his family left in their path. Public works and far-reaching changes (social, cultural, urban and legislative) are rediscovered in a network of tourist-cultural itineraries that showcase the important Napoleonic legacy of Corsica, Liguria, Sardinia and the coastal Provinces of Tuscany.
Partner territories: Ajaccio, Carloforte, Grosseto, Livorno, Lucca, Massa-Carrara, Pisa, Sarzana, Savona
Provincia di Massa-Carrara
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Summary
Introduction
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A great commander
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Napoleon Bonaparte Places of memory
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Madame Mère, Maria Letizia Bonaparte, nÊe Ramolino Town and country
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Lucien Bonaparte The art collector
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Cardinal Joseph Fesch A resolute woman
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Elisa Baciocchi Addresses
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•
It is not easy to write anything
about Napoleon that has not been written before, nor is it the purpose of this volume. The spirit, or Bonesprit, that animates it is rather to tell the story, from a different angle, of the rise of a figure whom the history books have taught us to love or, in some cases, look at without much sympathy. A leader of his time who, together with his family, helped change the history and geography of Europe. Can the Napoleonic saga really be relegated to the past? Far from it. Various places in Italy and Corsica still tell the story of that period, which marks the watershed between two centuries and two worlds. We are accompanied on this journey through time by five key figures, who depict an unusual historical-touristic mosaic that covers Tuscany, Liguria, Corsica and Sardinia. 7
We are guided, of course, by Napoleon himself. Setting out from Ajaccio, he made his mark right from the start, on his first Italian campaign. In the Savonese you can still catch echoes of his feats at Dego, Millesimo and Cosseria. He then travelled halfway around the world, “from the Alps to the Pyramids / from the Manzanares to the Rhine�, conquering Madrid, Moscow, Berlin, Vienna, Malta, Cairo, but not Sardinia. Early in his career, his attempted invasion of the island with a small French-Corsican fleet was defeated in the waters of La Maddalena by an Admiral from Carloforte. Letizia Ramolino then takes up the task of perpetuating the family memory. Bearing witness to the rise and fall of her second son, she saw her children receive the gifts of a kingdom or principality only to lose them when the situation turned critical. She takes you on a journey to the places of memory, palaces, mansions and museums rich in the records of the achievements, passions and tragedies of the extended Bonaparte clan. Lucien Bonaparte, the third of Carlo and Letizia Maria’s children, takes you through town and country, exploring landscapes modified by the various members of the Bonaparte family. He started out as the true revolutionary of the family, but in later life became a gentrified landowner 8
on his estates in the Tuscan Maremma, revealing his notable gifts as an archaeologist and an abiding passion for history. His strong-willed sister Elisa, Princess of Lucca and Piombino, has the pleasure of presenting you at Court and showing you over all the buildings and villas which, together with her husband Felice Baciocchi, she left to posterity. The last of our guides, taking us over places of worship (churches, cathedrals and commemorative chapels), is Cardinal Joseph Fesch, the half-brother of Letizia Ramolino. A man with an intense and rewarding life, he also experienced the grief of exile and clashed openly with his nephew Napoleon, whom he had followed in his youth on the Campaign of Italy, the land where he fell in love with art. Theirs is the task of defining the parameters of a new way of travelling, following the threads of history and satisfying your curiosity at each place of interest.
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Federica De Luca and Saul Stucchi
Happy reading and enjoy the sights!
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In Napoleon’s footsteps A journey through Liguria, Corsica, Sardinia and Tuscany
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A great commander Napoleon Bonaparte
I
regard myself as the most daring war-
time commander who ever lived. Bold, but never reckless! Even as a child I showed I had nerves of steel. Together with my powerful character and a particularly acute intelligence, they took me a long way. “Granite heated in a volcano�. That was how the literature teacher at the military school of Brienne described me. Perhaps an anecdote will show my natural talent for command. In the winter of 1783 Brienne was blanketed in a heavy snowfall and the teachers took the opportunity to teach us students the fundamentals of attack and defence. 13
They split us into two sides, leaving us free to move at will. I immediately took command of my squad and urged my companions to refrain from hurling themselves furiously against the enemy. Instead I got them to build a breastwork as protection from the enemy’s attacks and then inflicted heavy losses on them with skilfully timed sorties. The inquiring mind that some of my early teachers saw as my distinctive quality never flagged. Even when about to take ship for the long voyage to St. Helena, I insisted on touring all the fortifications on the island of Aix, designed by Vauban, the Sun King’s great engineer. I have always been technically-minded, receptive to innovations and convinced that to win a battle in the modern world a passion for details and careful preparation are even more important than warlike ardour. But the passing mention of these two small strips of land surrounded by the sea has brought to mind the island where I was born on August 15, 1769: Corsica!
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Po
PIEDMONT
Cosseria Millesimo
Dego
EMILIA ROMAGNA
LIGURIA
Sarzana Massa La Spezia
Savona Albenga
LIGURIAN SEA
Livorno a Tusc
TUSCANY
Portoferraio Elba Porto Azzurro
rch nA
ip
Grosseto
go
el
LAZIO
a
CORSICA
Arno
Lucca Pisa
Ajaccio
TYRRHENIAN SEA SARDINIA SEA
SARDINIA F
lum
Carloforte
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a
This tour of discovery of the military sites, which I have the pleasure of taking you on, could start only from Ajaccio. In the Salon Napoléonien in the Hôtel de Ville you can admire a picture painted in 1853 by Adolphe Yvon for the gallery of Compiègne Castle, where I often stayed. My nephew Napoleon III later made it his autumn residence. In this painting the artist, famed for his battle pieces, has portrayed me on horseback crossing the Alps in May 1800. If you compare it with the more famous version by Jacques-Louis David (who actually produced several versions of the work), you will see not just a different conception of style, but also how subsequent events have influenced Yvon’s composition. Here you see me with my shoulders hunched, in a far from heroic pose, while David depicted me confidently reining in my charger and pointing out the way to Italy. I clearly remember that epic
journey in the footsteps of Hannibal and Charlemagne. We had to struggle against ice, snow, storms and avalanches. The Great Saint Bernard opposed our every step, as if surprised and offended by that formidable army I commanded. But in vain. The battles in which I led my armies made their mark on the landscape and they have left a deep impression in the collective imagination, largely through the diligent spread of propaganda. Paintings, engravings, stories, monuments and the common objects of everyday life carried the tale of my feats across Europe. The battlefields that I will guide you to are places where local events are entwined with history in the grand style. Well-drilled armies and scattered troops have passed through them. And the cliff-top fortresses overlooking the limpid waters of the sea saw battles between fleets flying the flags of kingdoms and republics that no longer exist.
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Sardinia Carloforte
It is time to set out on our journey. To do so we need to step back for a moment, leaving Corsica and travelling to its sister island in the Mediterranean, Sardinia. To be more precise, I want to show you the little island of San Pietro, which together with Sant’Antioco makes up the Sulcis archipelago. Its history is fascinating and notable for one of the key features of our small inland sea: the extreme mobil-
ity that has always existed between its shores. Many peoples came here in antiquity, when it was visited in turn by the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans (who called it Sparrowhawk Island). It remained uninhabited for a long time until it was repopulated in the mid-18th century by a group of Ligurian sailors from the Tunisian island of Tabarka. Even today, as you stroll through the streets of its capital Carloforte or sample the renowned bluefin tuna in one of the seafront restaurants, you can
The Battle of Monte Negino as seen by Pietro Bagetti
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hear the unmistakable cadences of Ligurian speech preserved in the local dialect. Carloforte owes its name to King Carlo Emanuele III of Savoy, in remembrance and thanksgiving for having allowed the Tabarkan community to settle here. In 1767 the Duke of San Pietro began building a fortress, known as Forte San Vittorio, for the town’s defence, on a site with ancient Phoenician remains. It once housed an important astronomical observatory. But I, too, did something for the islanders. I interceded
in favour of a group of inhabitants who had been kidnapped in a pirate raid and carried off to Tunisia. This proves clearly that I bore no grudge for the crucial role the island’s Admiral Vittorio Porcile (1756-1815) played in the naval battle of La Maddalena in which the FrancoCorsican fleet was defeated. On 22 February 1793, our invasion fleet of some fifteen vessels, aboard one of which I commanded an artillery battalion, was driven off without much difficulty, destroying our hopes of
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conquering Sardinia. This was the demonstration that the sea was no place to display my talent for strategy. All in all, the incident had no serious effects for me, while for Vittorio Porcile it was perhaps the most glorious incident in a lifetime spent at sea, until he finally retired to Carloforte, where he died in 1815. His remains still repose in the church of the Novelli Innocenti, restored and reopened for worship by his family. But Carloforte also preserves the memory of an admiral far more famous than Vittorio Porcile, indeed world renowned: my fierce nemesis Horatio Nelson! He destroyed my fleet at the Battle of Abukir, during the Egyptian campaign, and a few years later he dealt us French the tremendous blow of Trafalgar (a victory that cost him his life). A plaque placed by order of the town council marks the bicentenary of his brief visit to the island. It reads: “On 23 May 1798, commanding the ships Vanguard, Orion and Alexander, the English admiral Lord Horatio Nelson cast anchor in the harbour of the island of San Pietro, where, thanks to the support of the Tabarkini, he repaired the damage to his ships and returned to sea”. His flagship had suffered severe damage to its masts, which the skilled shipwrights of Carloforte managed to repair in just four days. The admiral was so struck by their abilities that he praised them in a letter to his wife. (He later abandoned her for his mis-
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tress Emma, the wife of Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador to the Bourbon court of Naples.) But as you know, I am the last person to criticise the English admiral, having more than one peccadillo of my own to live down. Now is the time to speak of another person whose name is associated with Carloforte, a descendant of the great Michelangelo. This is the Pisan Filippo Buonarroti. He was active as an ideologue and revolutionary on the small Sardinian island as well as the mainland. With the support of the populace he erected a Tree of Liberty on the island in January 1793, a few months after the arrival of the French ships. San Pietro was proclaimed the “Isle of Freedom”, gaining the distinction of being the first republic in Italy in modern times. Buonarroti helped draft the constitution, which he presented soon after in Paris, declaring that the people of Carloforte desired to be part of the French Republic. He passed the following year in Liguria as National Agent and Proconsul at the National Commissariat of Oneglia. He engaged energetically in Jacobin activities, reorganizing the government of the conquered territories along French lines. His revolutionary ardour brought him into conflict with the powerful Marquis Del Carretto di Balestrino. His ancient stables contain a display of refined Napoleonic cadastral maps of the
Savonese. Buonarroti’s efforts to abolish his feudal privileges, a crushing burden on the inhabitants, failed because of the rehabilitation of the Marquis and Buonarroti’s fall from grace and his arrest in February 1795. He was first sentenced to prison, then internal exile and finally deportation for life. But he still kept up his political work, organising and supporting numerous revolutionary movements until his death in Paris in 1837.
Liguria
Dego, Monte Negino, Montenotte and Cosseria: the very mention of these places fills history buffs with enthusiasm. Amid these landscapes that now strike tourists as so peaceful and charming, little more than two centuries ago I and my army wrote some of the most glorious pages of the epic that bears my name. If Toulon was the first rung on the ladder to glory, the victories achieved in these regions fully confirmed my gifts as a leader and helped shape my myth. The starting point for reliving those events is Porto Vado Ligure. Setting out from here through the gorge of Altare, which separates the Apennines from the Alps, with the help of a local priest, Don Queirolo, our troops reached Monte Negino on 11 April 1796. What men I had under my command! Brigadier Rampon made his troops swear to die weapon in hand rather than surrender to the enemy. The next day Generals Masséna
and Laharpe launched the attack on Montenotte and on the 13th it was the turn of Cosseria. On April 14, at Dego I myself turned the tide of battle when all seemed lost. But the year before, in late 1795, Liguria had already been the scene of an epic battle. After three months of a war of attrition, our troops attacked the Austro-Piedmontese army at Loano, giving General Masséna a chance to display his talents as strategist and commander. Beginning on November 23 and for the next two days 25 000 French and 40 000 Imperial troops fought fiercely at Loano, Toirano, Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena, the Scravaion pass and Monte Lingo.
Albenga
A great battle From the terrace of the Fort of Albenga, looking eastward, you can see the lines of defence of the French revolutionary army: the natural ridge rises from the sea, passes through Capo Santo Spirito and follows the contours to end on the heights of Ormea. To imagine how it appeared in my day you have to remember that, because of the silt deposited by the Centa River, the shoreline has gradually moved away from the fortress, which now stands inland, 200 meters from the sea. In recent years the building has also been restored, with the addition of an exhibition space to host cultural events.
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Loano
The final act in the battle was the retreat of the Austro-Piedmontese troops from the plain of Loano. With the battle of Loano the French army acquired full
awareness of its moral and military superiority over the enemy. The soldiers were galvanized, hardened, tempered by fighting and hardships overcome. Their vigorous, resolute officers had
André Masséna That’s enough about the Pope Pius VII. Memories of my stormy relations with His Holiness put me in a bad mood. So I’ll hand you over to one of the most valiant generals I’ve ever known, tenacious and daring like few others. The greater the danger the bolder he grew and when he was beaten he never surrendered. In fact he returned to the attack with the same urge to win as before. Let me introduce André Masséna, nicknamed “victory’s favoured child”! Of humble origins, he was born in Nice when the town was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, and became a French citizen when revolutionary troops annexed it in 1792. The following year he was with me at the siege of Toulon. I was just twenty-four and a lieutenant colonel of artillery. I was completely unknown. The British held Toulon and it was essential for the French to retake the city. Its recapture was my first success and will always live as one of my finest memories. Sent to this trouble spot, I found everything in disorder, but I soon won the confidence of the officers and rank and file with my technical expertise, the result of years of study and unbounded talent. Masséna also made a significant contribution to this heroic feat. He was promoted brigadier general and seemed certain to be appointed to command the Army of Italy. In 1796 he was 37 years old, with a passion for women and money as well as glory. But I was chosen, though only 26, on the recommendation of Paul Barras, the most influential member of the Directory. In the Italian campaign Masséna distinguished himself on many occasions, and under the Consulate and the Empire he took part in almost all my campaigns. I made him Marshal of France and Prince of Essling, but I was also to cause him great pain. In September 1808, a few months after I had made him Duke of Rivoli, in memory of one of his most glorious battles, I invited him to a hunting party at Fontainebleau. Unfortunately for him, I’ve never been a good shot, and peppered him in the face so that he lost his left eye. General Berthier gave further proof of his loyalty by chivalrously taking the blame for the mishap.
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André Masséna Duke of Rivoli Prince of Essling, Marshal of France
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earned their trust. In Paris, the dream of seeing the Revolution’s fiercest enemy defeated became a real possibility. In early 1796 the Directory sent me to western Savona in order to complete the task. This was the starting point of the itinerary of the first Italian Campaign. In the short space of five days, I was able to repeatedly defeat the allied forces of the Austrians and Piedmontese at Montenotte, Dego, Cosseria and Millesimo. I drew on the reform of military tactics developed by Guibert in pre-revolutionary France, adapting them to a revolutionary army fired by great patriotic passion. A highly mobile army, with little need for supplies brought up from the rear, overstretching
supply lines. Instead it lived off the land it occupied, often inflicting real hardship on the local population.
Dego
One of the places in Liguria most closely connected with my name is Dego, in the province of Savona. Here the French and Austrian troops clashed for the first time on 21 April 1794. But it was the second battle of Dego, fought on 14 and 15 April 1796, that decided the outcome of the Italian campaign. If I had lost that battle, everything would have been different, but my victory over the Austro-Piedmontese army led to the conquest of Piedmont. In late 1797 Dego was added to the Department of Letimbro,
Giuseppe Pietro Bagetti You may not know it, but whenever you think of one of Napoleon’s battles, the images that come to mind may be the work of an illustrator from Turin who has earned the title of artist: Giuseppe Pietro Bagetti (1764-1831). History books are often embellished with his paintings, which have the great merit of combining an obsessive concern for accurate detail with harmonious panoramic views. They depict citadels besieged by French soldiers, while in the background tiny figures advance in perfect order. In other works the smoke hanging over the scene testifies to the disorder of the fighting, as a battle breaks down into many small clashes to conquer a farm or a breastwork. I greatly admire his depictions of my victorious campaigns of 1796, 1797 and 1800. In 1811 I awarded Bagetti the Legion of Honour for his view of Italy from the Alps to Naples. He even accompanied me on the disastrous Russian campaign. Perhaps weary of so many war scenes, in the last years of his career he began to explore a more imaginative kind of painting.
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with Savona as its capital. Then it was annexed to the first French Empire, together with the rest of the Ligurian Republic. In the following years, changes to the French administrative system also altered the jurisdiction of Dego, but the most remarkable event of this turbulent period was Pope Pius VII’s brief visit. The pontiff was forced by bad weather to stop here on his journey to Rome after a period of imprisonment, first in France and then Savona. On the day of my first abdication I decided to restore his freedom. His return became a triumphal journey. At Dego as elsewhere, the people acclaimed him as he was borne through the crowds in a sedan chair that can still be seen in the town hall.
Millesimo
Museo Napoleonico, Millesimo The epic battles of the Italian campaign of 1796 are illustrated by the many exhibits in the Museo Napoleonico at Millesimo (in the province of Savona). The museum is housed in Villa Scarzella, built as a summer residence in the late 18th century by Giuseppe Scarzella and then expanded by his son Alberto, mayor of Millesimo from 1888 to 1913. The rooms of the museum contain a wealth of material illustrating the exploits and protagonists of the battles fought in the province of Savona. In addition to prints there are maps, posters and public notices, all documents recording the historic events that took place in Liguria. The rich collection of
Dego, engraving by Pietro Bagetti
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Capture of the Castle of Cosseria in an engraving by Schroeder
engravings enables visitors to retrace the history of events from the earliest clashes in 1795 down to the French occupation of Val Bormida and Liguria and the establishment of the Department of Montenotte. They move step by step from the beginning of the 1796 Campaign to the Battles of Monte Legino and Montenotte and the conquest of Millesimo and Cosseria. There is a whole section on the Battle of Dego. A number of models make it easy to visualise the course of events, which often baffled those of us who took part, lost in the fog of battle. The succession of attacks and repulses, the disorderly retreats and advances, often made it impossible to get a proper overview of the state of
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battle. Most of the soldiers were as bewildered as Fabrizio del Dongo, the hero of Stendhal’s Charterhouse of Parma, on the battlefield of Waterloo. The Alcove What a year 1796 was! I still remember that spring evening (it was April 15) when, after several days of battles in the Savona area, I finally reaped the fruits of our efforts by receiving the formal act of capitulation from the enemy, who surrendered their flags. I greeted them in a room in the mansion of the noble Del Carretto family in Millesimo, the building which is now the Town Hall. That historic event was recorded in an 1838 engraving by Delanoy, which
Sarzana (La Spezia), Fortress of Sarzanello
portrays me seated on a divan in the lamp-lit room, receiving the homage of the vanquished. The chamber we are in was called the Alcove, a name little-suited to the distinguished guest it received a few years later: no less than His Holiness Pope Pius VII, born Barnaba Chiaramonti.
Cosseria
Castle of Del Carretto We can now return to the formidable spring of 1796, when our troops clashed with AustroPiedmontese forces. On April 13, I myself led the attack on the castle of Del Carretto at Cosseria. It stands atop a steep slope built to control the roads running from the sea to Piedmont. Remains show that the castle ex-
isted before the year 1000 and was held by Bonifacio del Vasto from 1091 and then by the Marquises of Clavesana in the 12th century, before passing to the Del Carretto family. After being abandoned it gradually fell into disrepair in the 17th century. Historical pageants are organized locally to mark the anniversaries of the battles
Fortress of Castellana
I had great plans for Baia delle Grazie in the Gulf of La Spezia. I meant to build a military arsenal and a new road linking the city to Portovenere. I gave the task of building a fortress to General Chasseloup, but the disaster of Leipzig and the consequent collapse of the Empire prevented
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its completion. The fortress of Castellana rises on the summit of Monte Castellana, near Portovenere, over 500 meters above sea level, and overlooks the Gulf of La Spezia. The fortress, surrounded by a broad moat, is hexagonal and has irregularly shaped sides. Access is provided by a stone bridge on the north side leading to a wooden portal. Barracks and storehouses overlook the only courtyard. The east and west sides are the battle fronts, each provided with two or three artillery emplacements. Since the hilltop is particularly exposed to storms, the roof of the fortress is equipped with a system of lightning rods which still functions. Although we French did not have time to complete it, the work we set our hands to must have been done pretty well, given that the fort was used in both World Wars I and II. Today it is owned by the Navy, which uses it as a telecommunications centre.
Fortress Firmafede
It was Lorenzo the Magnificent who commissioned construction of the Fortress Firmafede at Sarzana, built between 1487 and 1492, the year of his death. A striking example of late 15th-century Florentine military architecture, from the first the imposing structure of the Citadel was laid out on a rectangular plan with six bastions named after St. Barbara, St. Martin, St. Peter Martyr, St. Francis, St. Jerome and St. Bartholomew. The structure re-
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mained largely unaltered when the Genoese recaptured the city and the surrounding territory, since they simply completed the walls of the city. The keep, the tallest of the towers, was the nerve centre of the fortress. It also served as a last refuge if the besieging army succeeded in capturing the outworks. It still stands isolated and independent within a quadrangular courtyard, symmetrically paired with another rather larger courtyard to the east, which contained the stables and soldiers’ quarters. The main entrance was through a wagon gate set on the south side beside the guard house. The French Revolution, inspired by Enlightenment principles, affected the lives of state prisoners, among others, by improving sanitary conditions in penitentiaries. During the French occupation work began to convert the fortress into a prison and the headquarters of the municipal police. The architect was Maguin. He planned extensive work on the Citadel to bring the structure up to date and meet the latest standards, with the aim of correcting and rehabilitating the prisoners and reintegrating them into society. Proper sanitary facilities were essential to ensure the dignity and health of the inmates, together with social services and an infirmary with wards for the sick. Completion of this ambitious project was defeated by the capitulation of the French government of Genoa and Liguria in April 1814, following my
Biscotteria, Portoferaio (now the Town Hall)
first abdication after the disastrous defeat of Leipzig (in October 1813). Exactly one century after the French Revolution, the prison reform of the new Italian state provided for the construction of single cells for prisoners. After more than five hundred years of its troubled history, the Fortress Firmafede was finally reopened in 2003 after careful restoration to host cultural events and exhibitions.
Fortress of Sarzanello
The strategic importance of Sarzana, a town coveted by many powers, is confirmed by the existence of the Fortress of Sarzanello, a military stronghold on a rise dominating the Val di Magra. Its structure is the result of numerous interventions, with the earliest probably dating
from the tenth century. An important date is 1487, when the Florentines defeated the Genoese and took possession of Sarzana and Sarzanello. The Medici fully understood the town’s strategic importance and undertook a radical restructuring of its defences, which they entrusted to Francesco di Giovanni, called Francione, together with Luca del Caprina. The work was completed in less than ten years, between 1493 and 1502. It entailed the demolition of the medieval castle. Under Napoleonic rule the fortress was also in danger of being razed, but fortunately for visitors today this plan was never carried out. In the second half of the last century a lengthy process of restoration and refurbishment enabled it to be opened to the public. Today the
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only troops it sees are actors in historical pageants like the Napoleon Festival, an event wholly devoted to my epic career. But it is also used to present spectacles, events, workshops and art exhibitions. So Sarzanello has now been transformed into a cultural stronghold!
Tuscany
Portoferraio
I am pretty sure that nowadays the word biscuit makes you think sweet thoughts, remote from the idea of war. But in my day biscuits were closely, though not exclusively, bound up with the military, with “biscuits” in the sense of hardtack being baked for garrisons. The Biscotteria or biscuit bakery of Portoferraio on the island of Elba now houses the Town Hall, but it was built at the behest of Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in the second half of the sixteenth century, to supply the garrison and the new town called Cosmopolis, in his honour. Under the French occupation it was kept busy by the constant coming and going of young people, because the building was used for drafting soldiers on the lottery system. I was always opposed to allowing exemption from military service and tried to curb it, but I can well understand those young men’s parents were far from happy to be told they had been drafted. The bakery was also used for meetings of the town council. The records relate that during one of
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these it was decided to send me four horses during the terrible retreat from Russia in 1812. I wonder whether those generous hearts ever imagined that soon after I was to be their guest! A plaque on the façade of the building commemorates this, placed in memory of my short stay after landing on the island in May 1814, before moving to the Villa dei Mulini, also in Portoferraio. Though used to the hardships of military life, as shown by my inseparable camp bed, I wanted, as far as possible, to give an air of luxury to my residence, so to furnish it I removed the furniture from Elisa’s palace in Piombino.
Forte San Giacomo
Forte San Giacomo still stands in the town of Porto Azzurro on Elba (in the province of Livorno). Its historical name was actually Forte di Longone, after the bay it dominates. And the fortress was originally called “Pimentel” or “Benaventano”, in honour of the viceroy Giovanni Alfonso Pimentel, Count of Benavente. Over the centuries its name changed frequently, as did the functions of the fortress. It was built between 1603 and 1606 by order of King Philip III of Spain, who commissioned the design from Don Garcia de Toledo. It dominates the entrance to the gulf from the top of a small promontory rising some seventy metres above the sea. It was originally part of the control system organized by the Spanish to protect the shipping lanes of
Elba, Forte S. Giacomo
the Stato dei Presidi, founded in 1557. The strategic importance of this little state was inversely proportional to the extent of its territory, limited to the promontory of Argentario and comprising Orbetello, Porto Ercole, Porto Santo Stefano, Ansedonia, Talamone and Porto Longone. The fortress has a plan in the shape of an irregular pentagonal star. This appears clearly in aerial photographs and period illustrations, which make it immediately possible to identify the five bastions. They are connected by curtain walls in turn protected by outworks. The fort housed the Governor’s palace, accommodation for officers and barracks for soldiers of the garrison. In addition it contained a gunpowder magazine, armoury, two workshops (for the Artillery and Sappers), a bakery, a windmill and the
commissary (food store). It has remained state property and is now a penitentiary. This ends our tour of military sites. Perhaps it has stirred your curiosity to know which of them I considered the most difficult to conquer. I will repeat the answer I gave Admiral Cockburn on the island of St. Helena. After dinner one evening he asked what I considered the most formidable fortress in the world. I told him it was not possible to say, because each had its distinctive internal and external features. I mentioned a number, however, in various parts of Europe, including Gibraltar and Malta. In Italy I only named Mantua, which I captured after a long siege in 1797, thanks to victories at the bridge of Arcola and at Rivoli which destroyed the last resistance offered by the Austrians.
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Places of memory
Madame Mère, Maria Letizia Bonaparte, née Ramolino
I
n 1764, aged fourteen, I left the house of my
father, an inspector of the Italian Public Works Department for Corsica, being betrothed to the nobleman Carlo Maria Buonaparte. (Napoleon later dropped the “u” from his surname.) I was far from imagining what lay in store for me. I had to raise eight children (others died young), fated in their public and private lives to shape the destiny of the Old World. The experience made me severe, austere and dispassionate. Formidable and realistic, my contemporaries would have said. In 1785, just thirty-four years old, I was already a widow and facing the unknown in difficult times. The years of hardship were relieved only by the rise to power of Napoleon, my second 31
son, who raised the family to prosperity and brought it notoriety. I did not always share my children’s decisions and ambitions. For reasons known to me alone, which the historians continue to debate, I refused to attend the Emperor’s self-coronation. My son never forgave me. He went so far as to have me portrayed on the official dais in David’s immense canvas, now on display in the Louvre! I led a modest, secluded life far from the court, following the fortunes of my children and seeking to preserve their memory. I left Corsica, racked by repeated revolts, and took refuge first in Marseilles and then Paris, where I arrived in 1804, a few months before the decree was issued proclaiming “Son Altesse impériale, Madame, mère de l’Empereur.” A high-sounding title, but soon the more colloquial “Madame Mère” prevailed. In 1814, after Napoleon abdicated and went into exile on Elba, where I spent a few months with him, I decided to live in Rome, under the Pope’s protection, together with my halfbrother, Cardinal Joseph Fesch. There I remained for the rest of my days, praying and writing letters to Napoleon that were never answered, now that he was exiled to the distant island of St. Helena. In my heart, I cherished my native Ajaccio and the little island where it all began. 32
PIEDMONT EMILIA ROMAGNA
LIGURIA
Sarzana
Savona La Spezia
Albenga
LIGURIAN SEA
Massa Lucca Arno Pisa San Miniato Livorno
Portoferraio
TUSCANY
Tusca
i rch nA
Elba
Grosseto
pe
Procchio
la
g
CORSICA
o
Marciana
LAZIO
Ajaccio
TYRRHENIAN SEA SARDINIA
Founded by the Genoese, Ajaccio dominates the clear waters of the open sea. Around its coasts, tall, rugged cliffs alternate with beaches of fine sand. It is far from the Tuscan-Ligurian coast, to which it is bound by slender threads of a long history. It was that coast, as we shall see later, that my husband’s forebears left in the late 15th century for an island then still ruled by the Republic of Genoa. There they shaped a new destiny. Napoleon could only have been born in this land with its distinctive cultural identity. “I could recognize it at once with my eyes closed by the sweet fragrance of its vegetation”, he declared. In reality, he never spent much of his life on Corsica. But everything in the town, even today, conjures up the image and feats of its indomitable son and the Bonaparte family in general. The churches, mansions, streets, squares, country houses and museums I am going to show you are the
highlights of the themed tours that invite those travellers today called tourists to retrace the flowering of a myth. Napoleon himself would have been proud of all this interest. Every year, on August 15, the day he came into the world, on the Feast of the Assumption, it is rather as if he came back to life, to recover some of the serenity of his early childhood and the traces of a past that will never fade.
Corsica Ajaccio
The Maison Bonaparte, which more than any other preserves the Bonapartes’ family spirit, may not tell you much at first sight. Not in the least ostentatious, no different from the many other yellow-ochre buildings lining the narrow streets of this quarter, which until the 16th century was inhabited only by the Genoese. The house has
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stood on Rue Saint Charles since 1682, commemorating a dynasty that succeeded in establishing itself by forging alliances and making marriages of convenience. Seemingly modest, I entered it in 1764 as the young bride of Carlo Maria, the only male descendant of what was still the Buonaparte family. He enlarged and embellished the home of his ancestors with a fine terrace, beautiful crimson tapestries in his bedroom, marble mantelpieces and an imposing table in the dining room! All this helped shore up his acquired social prestige. By 1766 it was already one of the finest buildings in this picturesque quarter. Behind the simple façade bearing the family crest, I gave birth to seven of the eight children who survived into adulthood. On 15 August 1769 it was the turn of Nabulione di Buonaparte. He was named after an uncle (the brother of the Archdeacon Luciano) who had died shortly before. The future Emperor considered his name possessed a “manly, poetic and abun-
dant virtue”. The annals of the time record that I was seized with birth pangs while attending the Mass of the Assumption. I was quickly taken home in the sedan chair you can see on the ground floor, but this impetuous son allowed me no time to go up to my bedroom, so I gave birth on a sofa. A birth “in the field”, befitting the simplicity of the future soldier and what was later to be his bedroom: bare, with whitewashed walls and plain furniture. Nothing like the refined tapestries on a red ground of my drawing room on the first floor, brought from Paris. Or with the room where you can admire the Bonaparte genealogical tree, continued down to 1959, with autographs, weapons, portraits and other memorabilia. Or again with the room that evokes the visit to Corsica of Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie (1869). This was my domestic realm, where I played my part as mother, I hope to the best of my ability. I will not deny that I was authoritative and, as many said, a stickler for rules.
Carlo Maria Buonaparte: man, husband and father When he was unexpectedly struck down by death at Montpellier in 1785, my husband Carlo Maria, a Corsican nobleman and a brilliant lawyer who trained in Pisa and Rome, was not yet forty years old. Rarely present as a father and husband, he was a skilful politician and in 1767, when the transfer of Corsica from the Republic of Genoa to France was already in the air, he returned to Ajaccio to assist Pasquale Paoli, the prophet of the struggle for the island’s independence. Married three years earlier, Carlo shared his fortunes in the years of resistance. After Paoli was exiled and the separatists defeated, he embraced the French cause and was appointed to the newly established Corsican Order of Nobility. This was the first step in the ascent that in 1778 led him to represent Corsica at the court of Louis XVI.
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Anne Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Portrait of Carlo Maria Buonaparte. Ajaccio, Salon Napol茅onien in the H么tel de Ville
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Ajaccio, Maison Bonaparte, top in a period engraving, bottom in a photograph of its present state
Bathing was a daily practice, in contrast with the custom of the age, which considered once a week quite enough, even among the well-to-do! The death of Carlo Maria left me pinched for money. Joseph, my eldest, was only seventeen. Support was provided by my uncle, Archdeacon Luciano. In 1783 the house was plundered by Paoli’s partisans and later used by the British as a warehouse for weapons and living quarters for their troops. From Marseille, where we had sought refuge, we returned home in late 1796, and thanks to the compensation paid to the Corsicans by the Directory after the British occupation, we bought the apartment on the second floor and with Joseph commissioned the renovation work from the Swiss architect Samuel-Etienne Meuron. The house was embellished with refined decorations and furnishings. On my departure for Paris in 1799, I left it in the loving care of Camille Ilari, Napoleon’s nurse. He
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was to remember her in his will. The property passed in 1805 to my cousin André, who improved the exterior by laying out the pretty Piazza Letizia and a garden. Here, in 1936, a hundred years after my death, a bust by Venzin was set up depict-
ing the King of Rome (Napoleon’s son). Later the house changed hands a number of times, passing to Joseph and later his daughter Zénaïde, Princess of Canino, who sold it in 1852 to her cousin Napoleon III. While seeking to recover the original furniture, by then dispersed, he had it restructured by Alexis Paccard, the architect of the palace of Fontainebleau, and the painter Jérôme Magliol. Confiscated in 1870, it was returned to the Prince Imperial in 1874 and, after his death, assigned to his heir. In 1923 it was donated to the French state, which in 1967 turned it into the National Museum of Maison
Bonaparte. Today it is one of the most-visited historical monuments in Corsica. If you want to make the acquaintance of my family, be sure to look carefully at the velvet oval where I am shown together with Carlo Maria and all our children. I am still moved by the military uniform of the First Empire and the death masks of Napoleon, two in plaster and one in bronze. On July 21, 1771, Napoleon made his first, unwitting entry into society. He received the sacrament of baptism in the cathedral of NotreDame de l’Assomption, together with his sister Maria Anna, who
Les Milelli The Bonapartes’ country retreat of Les Milelli stands some 3 km from the town, in the hills covered with olives that circle Ajaccio. The deeds are preserved at Maison Bonaparte. The mansion, on a square plan, had beautiful vaulted cellars and was surrounded by many acres of land largely cultivated for the family’s needs. It was left to the Jesuits by Paul Emile Odone, my husband’s brother and the Emperor’s uncle. Together with some other property, it was later reclaimed by the Bonapartes after Louis XV expelled the religious order, and in 1785, the year I was widowed, it was restored to our family. I was forced to scrimp and save to pay for Joseph and Lucien’s studies and also secure an education for my younger children (Jérôme was just one year old). I gratefully accepted the help of Joseph Fesch, my brother and future Cardinal, who ran the estate on strict business principles. In 1793 I took refuge here with my daughters Elisa and Pauline, together with Fesch himself, to escape from Pasquale Paoli’s followers. To Napoleon this was a carefree place of leisure. When he came home he never failed to visit it. On returning from the Egyptian campaign in 1799, he spent the 2nd and 3rd of October there with Murat, Marshal Lannes and Rear Admiral Gantheaume. Two days later he left his homeland for the last time. His uncle the Archdeacon of Ajaccio bequeathed it to the city. In the 1970s and 80s it housed the Louis Dozan collection, now on display at the Musée de la Corse at Corte. Emptied of its memories, it has been closed to the public ever since. But it is still worth making the climb up here and breathing the scents of the surrounding countryside and the fragrant plants in the arboretum.
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died in Infancy. To relive the atmosphere of those moments, visit the Hôtel de Ville of Ajaccio, a simple building erected under the reign of Charles X, now the premises of the Napoleonic Museum. Here, in a room called the Salon Napoléonien, you will find a 19thcentury cabinet made of white wood gilt, surmounted by a large crowned “N” surrounded with
laurel and a bust of Napoleon by Antoine Denis Chaudet. It contains the future emperor’s baptismal certificate. This is a tattered manuscript, written in Italian in an italic hand. You can read Napoleon’s name below those of his sister Anna Maria, his father Carlo Buonaparte, and the godfathers and godmothers. With other memorabilia, they were bequeathed to
The Bonapartes, protagonists of the age At this point it is imperative to introduce my illustrious children. My eldest, Joseph, was born at Corte in 1768. He rejected legal studies and commerce to accompany Napoleon on the Italian Campaign. The course of Empire made him first King of Naples then, in 1808, King of Spain, where he proved very unwelcome. So he returned to France and stayed there until his brother’s downfall. After a spell in the United States, in 1839 he returned to Europe and lived in Florence until the end of his days. After my second son, who has already given you a full account of himself, in 1775 I gave birth to Lucien. Napoleon’s younger brother. He fought beside Pasquale Paoli for Corsican independence and was an ardent revolutionary. A subtle politician, in 1799 he was elected Chairman of the Council of Five Hundred, so favouring Napoleon’s rise to power and his own appointment as Minister of the Interior and then ambassador to Madrid. Relations with Napoleon soured because of Lucien’s second marriage to Alexandrine de Bleschamp. He was forced to accept exile in Rome, where Pope Pius VII awarded him the title of Prince of Canino. It was only on the eve of the Hundred Days that there was a reconciliation with Napoleon. Elisa, christened Maria Anna, was educated at a boarding school near Paris and rejoined us during the years spent in Marseille. Once back in Paris she incurred Napoleon’s disapproval by marrying Captain Felice Baciocchi. In 1805 she was made Princess of Lucca and Piombino and from 1809 Grand Duchess of Tuscany. She led an eventful life, much of it in obedience to the will of her brother, who called her “the best of my ministers”. Fate led her to Trieste, then Aquileia, and finally Bologna, where she lies buried in the basilica of San Petronio. My next child was Louis, whose education was supervised by Napoleon in Paris. They were doubly related, being
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the city by my brother, Cardinal Joseph Fesch. In addition to the certificate (some malicious souls have cast doubt on its authenticity), the salon presents a myriad of paintings, statues, medals, portraits and busts of the imperial family together with other donations. The Musée Fesch, in the palace of the same name that belonged to my half-brother, has
a death mask of my beloved son. It is a bronze inspired by the plaster cast taken by François Antommarchi, one of the doctors who recorded his death on St. Helena. Before becoming the supreme strategist, Napoleon was a child like any other. A child who already dreamt of performing great feats, at the head of imaginary
both brothers and sons-in-law, since Louis had married Hortense. He moved to Italy, where he devoted himself to literature. Of his three sons by Hortense, the youngest, Charles Louis Napoleon, was to become the Emperor Napoleon III. Pauline, or rather Maria Paola, is famous for her charm and beauty. The widow of General Leclerc, with whom she lived in Santo Domingo, she bowed to Napoleon’s plans and married Prince Camillo Borghese and presided over fashionable society in Rome, as well as winning the admiration of the most famous artists of the day. After Napoleon escaped from Elba, she was kept under special surveillance and spent her “hundred days” in Elisa’s residence at Lucca Compignano. The last of my daughters was Caroline, a woman of strong character who gained Napoleon’s consent to marry Joachim Murat, his aidede-camp, though he had formed other projects for her. With her husband she governed the Kingdom of Naples, where he began extensive archaeological excavations in Pompeii. Tensions and disagreements, followed by the fall of Napoleon, forced her to seek refuge in Austria. In 1824 she was allowed to return to Italy, but only to Trieste. Seven years later she moved to Florence, where she died. The last of my children, Jérôme, joined the Navy in 1800 and soon after married Elizabeth Patterson, a young middle-class American. Napoleon pressured him into having the marriage annulled, married him to Catherine of Württemberg, daughter of King Frederick I, and made him King of Westphalia. He was in the Emperor’s retinue in the campaign of Russia and then at Waterloo. After that it was only with the rise of his nephew Napoleon III that he returned to politics, being named a Marshal of France and President of the Senate. With Napoleon I and his brother Joseph, he is buried in the Church of Saint-Louis des Invalides in Paris.
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armies, not without getting into mischief. On the edge of the town, in the Casone area, formerly owned by the Jesuits, he loved to let his fertile imagination run riot in a cave, now known as “Napoleon’s grotto”, a cleft in a great heap of boulders among the olive trees. Legend has it that he returned to it as an adult on one of his rare visits to Ajaccio. For years neglected, as the Scottish traveller Thomasina Campbell recorded in Notes on the Island of Corsica (1872), this spot is now the Place d’Austerlitz, one of Ajaccio’s most beautiful squares. In tribute to the glorious battle, a monument was erected by public subscription: it consists of a massive granite pyramid topped by a flight of steps and flanked by two eagles with outstretched wings. It culminates in a copy of the imperial statue sculpted by CharlesEmile-Marie Seurre in 1833 for the column in the Place Vendôme in Paris. Its unveiling in 1938 was the occasion for four days of lively festivities from August 14 to 17.
Liguria Sarzana
Significantly the nickname given to Francesco Buonaparte, the first of the family to settle in Ajaccio, was “le Meure de Sarzana”. To tell the truth, the very first had been Giovanni Buonaparte. In the mid1400s he left this small town on the border between Liguria and Tuscany for Bastia in the train of the Governor Tomasino Campofregoso. I have no wish to go into matters certainly better left to the men of the family, but by the 13th century Sarzana, and with it the Lunigiana, was a strategic hub, a crossroads of trade and communications. It was of great interest to the Emperor Frederick II, who was determined to expand his empire into the rest of Tuscany, including the islands, and Sardinia. Sarzana was one of the most important markets in the peninsula. Merchants and craftsmen flocked here from all over Tuscany, because they could sell their goods freely. Professionals were also
Eternal guardians of the memory of the family The last Buonaparte to remain, so to speak, at San Miniato was Jacopo, who lived between 1478 and 1541 and was probably the author of a Historical Account of the Sack of Rome in 1527. His tomb is in the north aisle of the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta. Here in 1864 the provost Giuseppe Conti commissioned the Sienese sculptor Giovanni Dupré and his daughter Amalia to sculpt the monuments of illustrious figures associated with San Miniato. His half-length portrait surmounts the white marble cenotaph decorated with a bas-relief of an Allegory of History. His features reveal a certain resemblance to Napoleon and resemble a famous sculpture by Canova, made in Paris in 1802, which may well have inspired the work in San Miniato.
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attracted, public notaries in particular, who were needed to ratify a wide range of business deals. And Bonapars, the probable progenitor of the Buonapartes, was a notary, a Tuscan from San Miniato. He is recorded as early as 1245 among the members of the Town Council of Sarzana. After him, many other Buonapartes held high office in the public administration or the church and were prominent in local society. By their own merits, with a shrewd matrimonial strategy, they gradually intermarried with the most illustrious families of the Lunigiana, especially the Calandrini, who were close to Pope Nicholas V, and the Marquises of
Malaspina della Verrucola. My illustrious son often spoke of his distant forebears in Sarzana. As he will explain more clearly than I can, the town still possesses many traces of his sturdy defences. Porta Romana, also known as Porta Nuova, is one such example. Although centuries have gone by, the memory of our family is still alive in the town and every two years the Napoleon Festival celebrates Napoleon’s role in human history. In Sarzana, the branch of the Buonapartes allied with the Malaspina family could count on many possessions. They included a tower-house that can still be seen in the central Via Mazzini, perhaps part of a larger building that extended as far as today’s street number 36. Though largely transformed, the ground floor retains part of Its original medieval appearance and ancient pointed arches. Between them can be seen a small votive shrine and two inscriptions. Regrettably I am unable to show you the interior, as it is a private home. However, I recommend you pay a visit to these parts in spring, when the public can enter the atrium on the occasion of “Atriums in Bloom”. Between stonework and exposed brick walls, you can imagine yourself back in the 1300s, when this was a stronghold of the Buonapartes.
Tuscany
San Miniato
Ajaccio, Les Milelli
San Miniato, a charming town near Pisa, was the cradle of the dynasty, which later divided into two
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Ajaccio, the cave of Casone
distinct branches, the Buonaparte Speziali and the Buonaparte Franchini, which died out in the late 1700s, respectively with Giuseppe Moccio and the Canon Filippo Buonaparte. For nearly two centuries, their residence was what is now Palazzo Formichini at 45 Via IV Novembre. Do not be surprised that it sports the name of a savings bank. Since 1953 it has been the head office of the Cassa di Risparmio di San Miniato. The building dates from the 16th century, when Vittorio di Battista Buonaparte of San Miniato commissioned the building
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from the architect Filippo di Baccio d’Agnolo, son of a famous Florentine artist. It then passed to the Morali and Bertacchi families and in 1877 was bought by the Cavalier Filippo Formichini, before passing to the bank. It houses a valuable art collection. Among the most significant works is Napoleon’s Entry to San Miniato, an oil painting (together with a preparatory sketch) by the Tuscan Egisto Sarri (1837-1901). Shown by appointment only, it records the encounter at what was then called San Miniato al Tedesco (the name reflects the town’s German foundation) in
With Maria Letizia
June 1796 between the young General Napoleon Bonaparte, engaged at the time in taking Livorno, and Canon Filippo Buonaparte. The episode is also chronicled by the Gazzetta Toscana, published at San Miniato. Napoleon dominates the scene, on a white horse at the head of his army. With his cocked hat he salutes his elderly relative as he moves towards the clergy against the backdrop of the Tower of Frederick II. Local sources also tell of a previous visit. In 1778, when my second son was only 9 years old, he arrived in the town with his father Carlo Maria to
During his exile on Elba, Napoleon sometimes loved to withdraw into solitude. On long horse rides in the woodland around Marciana, he discovered the shrine of the Madonna del Monte, the most famous religious building on the island. Fascinated by the place and the extraordinary vista, extending all the way to Corsica, he decided to remain there a few days in late August and early September 1814. The episode, which my half-brother, Cardinal Fesch, will describe for you, was a way to escape from everyday life. In a rare moment of family intimacy, Napoleon was joined by the Polish countess Marie Walewska and little Alexandre, their illegitimate son. To keep in touch with his faithful followers, Bonaparte ordered the construction of an optical telegraph, on the Massa dell’Aquila, near the shrine where he used to linger near Zanca, sitting on a flat rock, more recently known as “Napoleon’s Chair”. Tradition has it that here he used to gaze nostalgically at his homeland. Pauline, too, used to bathe not far from Procchio, where the cliff now bears her name.
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Ajaccio, Salon Napoléonien in the Hôtel de Ville: Antoine Denis Chaudet, Bust of Napoleon I and cabinet with the Emperor’s baptismal certificate
recover documents testifying to the noble origins of the Bonaparte family needed for his admission to the French military college of Brienne.
Elba
After Corsica, the second island in Napoleon’s affections was Elba. He disembarked here in May 1814 and, though an exile, the emperor received a warm welcome. I remained by his side some time on this delicate occasion. He did not feel defeated. A true sovereign he helped modernize the island, improving its road network as well as its social and institutional structure. He also enlivened Elba’s cultural and social life, with the help of Pauline, his frequent guest. But Elba was only a stepping stone. On 26 February 1815, he used one of the many Car-
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nival festivities to cover his escape, together with his faithful followers, a thousand strong. His small fleet set sail from here on board the brig L’Inconstant, camouflaged as a British ship. He was ready to regain his throne and power. Napoleon spent the first days of exile on Elba in what is now the Town Hall of Portoferraio, as a plaque on the façade records. At that time it was the Biscotteria or bakery, turning out hard tack for the garrison, the new Medici town, and the rest of the island. The building my son had chosen as his official residence was not yet ready and to equip his quarters fittingly he brought many personal items from Paris. Soon after this he moved to a house
called Villa dei Mulini, at the location of the same name in the upper part of Portoferraio. Today the Villa dei Mulini and the Villa San Martino together form the Musei delle Residenze Napoleoniche on the island. It offers a panoramic view between Forte Stella and Forte Falcone, and is particularly exposed to the winds. Hence it was originally chosen as the site of four windmills, later demolished to lay out an Italian garden. Built in the early 1700s by Grand Duke Gian Gastone de’ Medici, and later the headquarters of the Artillery and Engineers, it comprises a central single-storey building, its sides extended into two symmetrical pavilions. Napoleon’s had extensive alterations made and a storey added to the central block so as
to bring everything up to the same level. A large first-floor ballroom was installed, to be used for festivities and receptions. An especially welcome guest was Pauline, who often stayed at the house. The work was carried out by the architect Paolo Bargigli of Livorno. Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, he was not new to our family entourage. He had already worked on important commissions at Massa and Carrara for my daughter Elisa. The interiors were designed by the official court painter Vincenzo Revelli, who also designed the gallery ceiling and the upper rooms of the building. It was delightful little retreat, whose pleasures I shared. It boasted a theatre, refurbished by the architect Luigi Bettarini. The library was Napo-
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leon’s special pride. He stocked it with volumes from Fontainebleau and later those supplied by Cardinal Fesch. It contained books on history and the art of war, but also literature, geography, and legislation, together with a large number of Greek and Latin classics. There were few Italian books, including only one printed in Livorno. Like all the imperial libraries, it was divided into two distinct groups: one for my son’s exclusive use and the other for the court. Most of Napoleon’s personal books, bound in morocco, were embossed with an “N” surrounded by two laurel branches crossed or accompanied by the imperial arms. The collection includes two books that belonged to Pauline Borghese, marked with a golden “P” surmounted by a crown. Three bookplates with the initial “C” probably came from his sister Caroline’s library. After Napoleon’s daring departure, the library was donated to the city of Portoferraio. With the unification of Italy, Napoleon’s legacy was enlarged with other donations. Currently the library, owned by the municipality, is housed in Villa dei Mulini and is part of the museum’s collections. It was again Bargigli who made the structural changes to Villa San Martino, which Napoleon chose as his private residence during his exile on the island. Secluded from the town, it is set amid the vineyards and woods in the valley of San Martino, 5 km from Portoferraio. My son wanted everything to be the same as in Paris (“que soit tout comme à Paris”), so the house
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was remodelled into a noble residence. Laid out on two floors with a square plan, it was enlarged and opened onto hanging gardens which offered (and still do) a stunning view over the bay of Portoferraio. The decorations and details represent aspects of public and private life in the Napoleonic era. The frescoes in the Stanza del Nodo d’Amore (“Room of the Knot of Love”) are inspired by the union of Napoleon and Marie Louise of Habsburg-Lorraine, painted by Antonio Vincenzo Revelli of Turin. The Egyptian Room is decorated with trompe l’oeil paintings with hieroglyphics, pyramids and a great zodiac. There are portrayals of aspects of the imperial achievements, but also charming curiosities such as the octagonal pool laid in the paving to contain papyrus plants in the Eastern fashion. The steps known as the Salita Napoleone, leading from the old town of Portoferraio to the Villa dei Mulini, are flanked by the Museo della Misericordia, adjacent to the church of the Confraternity of the Misericordia. Its three rooms contain items donated in 1852 by Prince Demidoff, a great admirer of Napoleon’s achievements. There is a copy of the sarcophagus in which the Emperor is laid at Les Invalides, his death mask in bronze made by the Susse brothers in Paris in 1841 after the cast taken by his personal physician Antommarchi on St. Helena, together with his funerary urn and a cast of his hand donated by the Musée de l’Armée in Paris. But I suggest you should particularly note the flag of Elba.
Napoleon chose the colours of the flag of his new state during his stay on the island. The standard had a diagonal red stripe and three gold bees on a white field. A few days after landing on Elba it already flew on all the strongholds and in all the towns on the island! Inspired by the ancient banner of the Appiani, governors of Elba after the fall of the Republic of Pisa, the flag conferred inviolability on the ships that raised it, under Article IV of the Treaty of Fontainebleau. My indomitable son’s last act on the island was played out at the Teatro dei Fortunati, later renamed the Teatro dei Vigilanti! He donated it to Portofferaio, commissioning the conversion of the 18th-century church of the Carmine from the court architect Paolo Bargigli. It is still used for operas, concerts and conferences.
It is a modern Italian-style opera house with a typical horseshoeshaped plan, four tiers of boxes and a imperial loggia in the middle of the second order, surmounted by a gallery. It was finished with gilded stucco ornaments by Campolmi of Livorno and decorated by the painter Antonio Vincenzo Revelli, who also painted the stage curtain. It was inaugurated on January 24, 1815. It had a chequered history, with a first attempt at restoration in 19221923, then its conversion into a cinema, and finally in around 1980 it was subjected to extensive restoration by the architect Maria Berta Betazzi. The Carnival Ball held on 26 February 1815 to cover Napoleon’s escape from Elba was held in this theatre. The Emperor left it secretly to board the brig and reopen his personal dialogue with history.
The Galleria Demidoff When Napoleon left the island, Villa San Martino was temporarily left empty. It was brought back to life by the Russian Prince Anatole Demidoff, husband of Mathilde, one of Napoleon’s nieces, who purchased it from the heirs. A great patron of the arts, he commissioned the Florentine architect Niccolò Matas to create a large gallery, now the Galleria Demidoff, which contains relics and artworks celebrating the legend of the great Corsican. Blending naturally with the landscape and enhanced by neoclassical overtones, the gallery was originally the plinth of the villa above, with which it now forms a single whole. The imperial symbols are a distinctive feature of the decorations: the portrait of the imperial eagle in the frieze running along the front, the three bees, the “N” and the insignia of the Legion of Honour. When it opened to the public in 1861, the Galleria Demidoff was the first true Napoleonic museum in history. It was so rich that initially many of its artworks were used to furnish the villa above.
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48
Town and country Lucien Bonaparte
I
was the true revolutionary of the Bonaparte
family. Let me introduce myself: I am Lucien, the third of the children born to Letizia and Carlo Maria Buonaparte, at least of those that survived childhood. I was born at Ajaccio on 21 May 1775, the year the American War of Independence broke out. Our Corsica was also struggling to win its independence. While still quite young I joined the movement led by Pasquale Paoli. I then took part in the French Revolution and was instrumental in the coup of 18 Brumaire 1799, when as President of the Council of Five Hundred, I kept control of a situation that had become 49
particularly dangerous for my brother Napoleon, with some of the deputies clamouring for his arrest. This time I allowed family ties to prevail over the interest of the Republic. Without my intervention, events would have taken a very different turn. Napoleon’s gratitude was short-lived. It ended with his making me Minister of the Interior and later Ambassador to Madrid. The split came with my decision to marry Alexandrine de Bleschamp after being left a widower by the death of Christine Boyer. Napoleon had his own dynastic plans for me, and I had undermined them. My marriage to Alexandrine brought me nine children, but it was paid for by exile. I was not invited to Napoleon’s coronation and that same year, 1804, I moved to Rome, where Pope Pius VII made me Prince of Canino, selling me a large estate in northern Lazio. In the countryside, I developed a passion for archaeology and organized the excavation of many Etruscan sites. The antiquities I brought to light eventually found their way into the most important museums of Europe. In Munich, for example, you can see one of my finest treasures: the famous cup fashioned by Exekias, which depicts Dionysus surrounded by Etruscan pirates transformed 50
into dolphins. Napoleon and I were reconciled only on the eve of the Hundred Days, between his return from Elba and Waterloo, the penultimate act in his saga before his final banishment to St. Helena. At this point, perhaps, you will be curious to know what I look like. A good way to find out is to visit the MusĂŠe Fesch, in the mansion in Ajaccio once owned by our uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fesch. This can be seen as the historical archives of our family. It is the ideal starting point for many Napoleonic tours, including this one devoted to the city and countryside. A portrait by Jacques Sablet, on display in the museum, depicts me in the foreground, plainly dressed, gazing into the distance with a melancholy expression. In the background appears the love of my life, my wife Christine Boyer, who died in 1800 aged 29. The distance between us evokes the grievous separation inflicted by fate on us. It was hard for me to recover from the blow. For a long time I gave up all other interests and withdrew to my residence at Plessis-Charmant in Picardy. I only had the strength to go every day to visit the grave of my poor Christine. Napoleon had to intervene to shake me out of the state of listless melancholy into which I had fallen. 51
PIEDMONT
Albenga
EMILIA ROMAGNA
Sarzana
LIGURIA Savona
La Spezia
Carrara
Portovenere
Massa Livorno
LIGURIAN SEA
Bagni di Lucca Lucca Arno Pisa
TUSCANY Tusca
Piombino
i rch n A
Elba
Canino
la
er Tib
pe go
CORSICA
UMBRIA
Grosseto
Ajaccio
LAZIO
TYRRHENIAN SEA
Rome
SARDINIA
After the stormy early years of the Revolution, when I was more extreme than Napoleon, life blunted many of the rough edges of my character and, almost without my noticing, I found myself a gentrified landowner and then a Prince! I’d come a long way from the barricades to the rolling hills of Lazio, where nature made me forget the bitterness of that turbulent age and the clashes with my imperial brother! But speaking of landscapes, urban or rural, I remember with pride the ambitious projects that the various members of my family undertook in the territories subject to their authority. Napoleon and Elisa both particularly distinguished themselves. They completely altered the appearance of many areas. In the towns they opened new markets and levelled old buildings, some of them ancient, without worrying if the citizens grumbled. Outside the urban areas they planned the construction of new roads, invested
52
in modernizing mines and spas, seeking both pleausure and profit. They were both aware of Parisian grandeur and sought to transfer it, with the necessary modifications, to their Italian domains. Not all the projects were completed according to the ideas that had inspired them, but they always hired the finest architects, engineers and artists and traces of their work can still be seen in many places.
Liguria
Between La Spezia and Portovenere
Roads were important in the French Empire. They facilitated trade and enabled people to travel fast. But, as in the days of ancient Rome, the main function of the network was military. So the road between La Spezia and Portovenere (today the SP 530), also known as the Via Napoleonica, led to the future naval dockyards and the city of Napoleonia, planned for the
Turin, Archivio di Stato. Cadastral map of the town of Finale Ligure (Savona)
La Spezia’s treasure trove The Public Library of La Spezia preserves a treasure on paper: a collection of some 270 topographic surveys made by a team led by Pierre-Antoine Clerc (1770-1843). Napoleon had ambitious plans for the Gulf of La Spezia and Clerc’s survey (1809-1811) made use of the latest innovations, such as contour lines, introduced to represent the altitude of the places depicted. This scientific achievement is recorded in three bound albums, a folder of loose sheets and a set of watercolours. These precious documents were preserved by the foresight of a scientist of La Spezia, Giovanni Capellini, one of the founders of modern geology, who discovered them in France. He purchased them and made a gift of them to his native city.
53
west coast of the Gulf of La Spezia. The diary kept by Colonel Morlaincourt, whom Napoleon sent to inspect the Gulf, describes the state of affairs before the projects altered the landscape. In 1808 the Emperor ordered the construction of the road, entrusting the project to Gratian Lepére, head engineer of the
Department of the Apennines, and within four years, in late 1812, it was virtually completed.
Sarzana
Napoleon took you on a tour of his military sites, an I’m sure you remember the fortresses of Firmafede and Sarzanello at Sarzana.
Place De Gaulle Ajaccio is the birthplace of us Bonapartes, although the family originally hailed from Tuscany. This Mediterranean city is where we were born and grew up, each with a distinctive character, but basically united by strong ties that even wars, revolutions and personal choices never severed. Though Joseph was the eldest son, Napoleon was the dominant figure in the family after our father’s death. His charisma is clearly brought out by a very unusual monument on the Place de Gaulle, close to the city’s cathedral and the beautiful seafront promenade. It represents Napoleon riding in triumph, in the pose of a victorious Roman emperor, surrounded by us four brothers, Jérôme, Louis, Joseph and Lucien. The history of the monument is entwined with that of France. It was voted in 1854 by the General Council of Ajaccio and in 1862 a committee was set up to raise funds by public subscription. It was chaired by Prince Jérôme Napoleon and the first subscribers included the ministers of Napoleon III. The result was a collective work by many hands. Working to a design by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Antoine-Louis Barye created the equestrian statue of Napoleon, Aimé Millet that of Joseph, JeanClaude Petit that of Louis, and Jacques-Léonard Maillet that of Jérôme, while mine was the work of Gabriel-Jules Thomas. The official inauguration took place in 1865 with the monument facing seawards by the express instructions of Viollet-le-Duc. A century later, in 1969, on the bicentenary of Napoleon’s birth, it was decided to move it to face the city. As you can see, even monuments can move! This is hardly surprising if you think of the obelisk that beautifies Place de la Concorde in Paris, brought from Luxor by my nephew Napoleon III: it took some 5 years of work at a cost of more than a million francs to satisfy this whim. As you follow me on this journey you will find that the craze to alter landscapes and cityscapes infected many members of the Bonaparte family, not just Napoleon!
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But I want to take you on a walk to the Porta Romana of the lovely old town on the border between Liguria and Tuscany. This is one of the four city gates that were part of the defensive system that encircled Sarzana in the twelfth century. Together with Porta Parma, it is the only one that still stands today. In the Napoleonic era it was called Porta Nuova after its modernization in 1783 by Pietro De Franchi, who gave it its current appearance. As you can see it is a monumental gate with a single arched passage. It is faced with white marble, unmistakably from the quarries of nearby Carrara. If you look closely you will make out the arms of Genoa and read the inscription with the date of the work, while the aedicule holds a statue of the Virgin Mary. The vault is decorated with the emblem of Sarzana, a rising moon on which shines an eightpointed star. As you stroll through the narrow streets of Sarzana’s old town you will come to the Teatro degli Impavidi. Built on the ruins of a fifteenth-century Dominican church and monastery, it was designed by the architect Paolo Bargigli. Construction began in 1807 and it was completed two years later, as a plaque at the entrance records. The result is a design in which elements such as the eighteenth-century horseshoe-shaped plan are perfectly matched with the neoclassical details and the elegant decoration of the parapets of the boxes and proscenium. A fresco by Giovan Battista Cel-
lie covers the central vault with a fantasia of music-making cupids. The audience is accommodated in the pit and three tiers of boxes surmounted by a gallery. The stage and portico occupy the area where the cloister once lay. The old well is still below the stage, while in the dressing rooms you can see a frescoed lunette surviving from the earlier complex.
Tuscany Piombino
In the 15th century the Appiani family, Princes of Piombino, commissioned the Florentine architect Andrea Guardi to build the Citadel and manor court. In addition to Palazzo Appiani, it included a chapel dedicated to St. Anne, a cistern and all the facilities essential to the life of the sovereign and court. Elisa’s resolute policy extended to this part of her principality. In 18051807 she undertook a complex building project that resulted in the creation of Palazzo Nuovo by refashioning the rooms of the Palazzo Vecchio and incorporating the various outbuildings into the new structure. She also laid out a large garden by demolishing a gateway and bastion of the old complex. A small sacrifice, after all. We Bonapartes believe that, the old has to give way to the new when its time is up! Strada della Principessa The time has now come to talk about another road, the provincial Strada della Principessa, connecting Piombino to San Vin-
55
cenzo by a route winding through coastal dunes and pine forest. Its earlier name of Strada dei Cavalleggeri (Road of the Light Cavalry) reflects the fact it was constantly patrolled by soldiers manning the coastal towers, while its new and nobler nickname comes from having been extended and modernized in record time to provide a befitting reception to the Princess of Lucca and Piombino, my sister Elisa. Surprisingly, despite the importance it has always had for the local road network, it remained a dirt road down to the 1950s.
Livorno
Since 1994 Villa Mimbelli in Livorno has housed the Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori. Of course most visitors come to admire works by Giovanni Fattori, an artist from Livorno, and other members of the Macchiaioli movement, such as Telemaco Signorini and Silvestro Lega. But the collections include a pair of busts, of unknown origin, of myself and my beloved Christine. These works were added to Livorno’s public collections less than a century ago, in 1920, and were identified as our portraits only after the discovery of two similar alabaster busts, attributed to the great Lorenzo Bartolini, our family’s official sculptor. The two busts in the Museum may be copies commissioned to ensure that portraits of the members of the imperial family were as widespread throughout the empire as possible. All part of the official propaganda so cleverly organized by my brother Napoleon.
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Massa
Our next destination on the itinerary devoted to the city and countryside is the centre of Massa, where nature takes a very unusual form. Piazza degli Aranci is named after the orange trees surrounding it on three sides. Here again my sister Elisa stopped at nothing to carry out her plan. The commission was first given to Paolo Bargigli, who was then replaced by Giovanni Lazzarini. It involved the demolition of the old church of San Pietro, in spite of opposition from the city authorities. Its remains came to light during the recent work of repaving the piazza. In 1806 Napoleon gave Elisa the regency of the Duchy of Massa and she wanted a spectacular square to serve as a scenic forecourt to her Ducal Palace. An absolute must in Carrara is a visit to the Accademia di Belle Arti in Palazzo Cybo Malaspina. The covered courtyard houses the museum of plaster casts, with a rich collection of some 250 casts made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Looking closely at the Roman aedicule of the Fantiscritti, you can make out a simple inscription bearing the signatures of Canova and Giambologna.
Between Lucca and Castelnuovo
My sister’s plans were not confined to the towns of her Principality. In 1810, for example, Elisa decided to build a road to link Lucca to Castelnuovo. The route of the Strada Garfagnana, now regional (formerly state) road 445, corresponds exactly to that of the road
Sarzana (La Spezia), Teatro Impavidi: Giovan Battista Celle, Fantasia of cupids as musicians, fresco
57
built by Elisa. Between 1807 and 1810, however, a post road was built between Lucca and Bagni di Lucca, and that section of its course corresponds to the current Strada Statale 12 dell’Abetone e
del Brennero. This sector also incorporated the most innovative road-building methods, such as three strata of gravel of different sizes, with the largest at the bottom and the finest on the surface.
The Napoleonic Cadastre for the province of Savona My brother Napoleon had many detractors, and even I often criticised his policies. Yet it has to be recognised that one of his reforms made history and became a model. This was the Napoleonic Cadastre (land register), which broke with the past, letting a wind of modernity and efficiency sweep through this sector. Rationalising and standardising were Napoleon’s watchwords. The land register was the instrument he used to make a survey of property (and so tax it!). Just as an extraordinary team of scientists, artists and technicians had mapped Egypt during his ill-fated adventure in the land of the Pharaohs (1798-1801), providing an up-to-date and accurate picture of the country, so the officials of the Cadastre mapped the territory of the Kingdom of Italy with an accuracy hitherto unknown, using the latest surveying techniques and the metric system. Napoleon was justly proud of his creation and on Saint Helena called it “the most solid institution of the Empire, a true safeguard of property, protecting the social order and securing individual independence.” On becoming master of half Europe he found himself having to administer an immense and extremely fragmented territory. He sought to remedy this situation by the edict of 1807 which instituted the Cadastre on clearly stated principles. They specified the colours to be used in the maps, drawn on rectangular sheets using conventional symbols that were immediately comprehensible. Another innovative feature was the use of summaries indicating assessments, the names of the landowners, the quality and the areas of the plots. In the territory of Savona, the mapping took from 1808 to 1815 and was carried out under the direction of Gilbert Chabrol de Volcic (1773-1843), Prefect of the Department of Montenotte. Napoleon was directly responsible for his appointment. The provincial capital Savona grew prosperous under his administration, and the city still commemorates him with the piazza in the old town which bears his name. The State Archives of Savona contain numerous sheets from that immense undertaking.
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Lucca
Lucca’s Botanical Garden is a place rich in history, where the life cycles of nature are interwoven with the human generations. It was founded in 1813 by the School of Medicine and the Committee for Developing Lucca to preserve local plant species, but it was Elisa who approved its foundation the following year, just before being forced to leave the city following Napoleon’s first abdication. The project was shelved, only to be resumed and completed under the government of Maria Luisa of Spain, Duchess of Lucca. A tree in the garden still bears witness to that time: a cedar of Lebanon 22 metres high and more than 6 metres in circumference, with a crown that covers some 500 square metres. It was planted in 1822 by the garden’s first director, Paolo Volpi. The Botanical Garden is divided into various sections, ranging from the arboretum with exotic trees and shrubs to the pool which includes examples of the local fauna, and a rockery with
plants from the mountains of Lucca and Pisa. The Palazzo Ducale and the piazza before it have been the heart of the city for at least seven centuries, ever since 1316, when Castruccio Castracani, seigneur of Lucca, radically shifted its centre of power. On this site he built the Fortress Augusta and his palace, which then became the fulcrum of the Republic and its mercantile ruling class. When Elisa came to the city in 1805 she immediately planned far-reaching changes aimed at creating a piazza and embellishing the palace, with its rooms being decorated in the new Empire style. This urban revolution stirred deep resentment among the people and intellectuals, but work went ahead rapidly, with buildings being levelled and the planting of mature trees. The result was a collage of buildings rather than the planned harmonious architectural ensemble. The commemorative monument to Napoleon that was intended to embellish the square (Piazza Napoleone),
Massa, Piazza Aranci, Palazzo Ducale
59
Lucca, Via Elisa. Opposite page: the garden of Palazzo Froussard
had a troubled history. Though Elisa leaned toward a more striking design with a large fountain, the sculptor Leopoldo Vannelli presented a plan with a particularly modest budget and eventually got his way. But Elisa never saw the monument completed because she had to leave Lucca in March 1814. Napoleon’s head was then replaced with that of Charles III, Duke of Parma, and the statue was moved to the ramparts of the city walls before ending up in the Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi. In 1817 the geopolitical map was redrawn at the Congress of Vienna and Maria Luisa, the Bourbon Duchess of Parma, took Elisa’s place on the throne of Lucca. A statue of her, sculpted by Lorenzo Bartolini, was
60
installed at the centre of the piazza in 1843. The square was gradually reduced to a huge car park, until recent reclamation work restored the perfect balance between simplicity and magnificence of Elisa’s original conception of the piazza. My sister Elisa commissioned several projects intended to change the appearance of Lucca to accord with her personal taste. One of the most important was the opening of a new city gate, which combined the practical function of improving access to the inner centre with a deep symbolic significance. The Princess wanted Lucca to be open to the east, meaning Florence, its eternal rival. Having been made Grand Duchess of Tuscany on March 3, 1808, she wanted the people to think of it as
a region henceforth united and at peace under her rule. Under this ambitious plan, the gate led to the magnificent piazza named after Napoleon by a broad street lined with porticos. Porta Elisa was thus conceived as a triumphal arch through which travellers would pass after arriving along a broad tree-lined avenue, the final section (for those coming to the city) of the road joining Lucca to Florence. Again her ambitious plans had to be scaled down and the gate was erected in 1811, partly by reusing marble from the demolished church of the Madonna. The result discontented everyone, eliciting a series of proposed improvements, but the two side arches were added only in 1937. In 1812 work began
on the Via Elisa, entrusted to the architect Giuseppe Marchelli, fresh from a trip to Paris where he had got up to date by studying the latest projects then changing the capital of the Empire.
Bagni di Lucca
Many places in Tuscany are named after Elisa: not just the cities she sought to beautify and modernise, but also natural beauty spots such as Bagni di Lucca. Though the hot springs were already highly regarded in Roman times, it was the Countess Matilda of Canossa in the 11th century who brought them their first period of splendour. But it took my sister’s charm and resourcefulness to really put Bagni di Lucca on the map internationally.
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Lucca, Bernabò spa
The Napoleonic period was a mix of revolutions large and small, including some in everyday life. This was the period, for example, which adopted the individual bathtub instead of communal bathing, which had a long tradition dating back to the Romans. Elisa’s drive for modernization promoted a number of different spas, such as Bagno Bernabò, founded in 1593, graced by a new elevation with an open loggia, while the two lateral buildings differentiated access according to social class. The French Revolution broke down many barriers, but obviously not this one! Particular attention was paid to the hot springs, the oldest part of the spa, which became the showpiece
62
of an “all-in package” that offered treatment in a modern health centre, as well as pastimes and entertainments in the recently built ballroom and casino. The Grotta Paolina, one of two caves offering natural steam treatment, is named after our other sister, Princess Pauline Borghese, who frequently took the waters here.
Elba
Our journey now takes us to the island of Elba and Villa San Martino, chosen by Napoleon as his private residence during his ten months of exile, from 4 May 1814 to 26 February 1815. The architect Paolo Bargigli had earlier worked for Elisa (Piazza degli Aranci in Massa and
the Teatro degli Impavidi in Sarzana). He was now asked to convert a villa surrounded by woods and vineyards into a private residence befitting an Emperor, albeit one who had lost his empire. The standard aimed at was Parisian. To attain this the building was enlarged and the front elevation opened out onto a hanging garden. From here the illustrious exile enjoyed a spectacular view of the bay of Portoferraio, a privilege modern visitors now share. The decorations are the work of Antonio Vincenzo Revelli, an artist from Turin. The frescoes in the Stanza del Nodo d’Amore (“Room of the Knot of Love”) celebrate the union between Napoleon and Marie Louise of Austria. The Egyptian Room has an octagonal pool where papyrus plants once grew, clearly evoking the Egyptian campaign, like the hieroglyphics and pyramids covering the walls. After Napoleon’s daring escape from Elba, Villa San Martino was abandoned for some time until it was purchased by the Russian Prince Anatole Demidoff, who married our niece Mathilde, our brother Jerome’s daughter. Demidoff was responsible for creating a gallery (it now bears his name), which exhibited relics and works of art commemorating and celebrating the Napoleonic myth. Together with the Villa dei Mulini, the Villa San Martino houses the Museo Nazionale delle Residenze Napoleoniche dell’Isola d’Elba
Maremma
In Napoleonic times the Maremma was still a wilderness. The scourge of malaria took a heavy toll on the lives of its inhabit-
ants year after year. The Etruscans and Romans had developed various coastal localities and spas such as Saturnia, while under the government of Siena the policy was to invest in developing new towns in the hinterland to exploit the mines. Then the pendulum of history shifted back towards the coast. The Florentines and Spaniards were concerned principally with defending its shores, building fortifications at points such as Talamone, Orbetello and Porto Ercole. Leopold II of Habsburg-Lorraine (1747-1792), Grand Duke of Tuscany, launched a project to drain the marshes, hoping to heal what he termed his “sick daughter” Maremma. But the work was particularly long and laborious. It was completed only after the fall of the Fascist regime. In addition to improving the quality of life in the Maremma, reclamation made it possible to plant new crops and build new infrastructures, the engine of an economy that has now begun to pick up speed, especially since tourism has discovered the pearls of the coast, from Punta Ala to Argentario. Despite far-reaching changes in the Maremma, its distinctive features have not been lost, thanks to the establishment of nature reserves, such as the Parco Interprovinciale di Montioni with its ancient mining settlements. By nature proud and jealous of their independence (like us Corsicans!) the inhabitants did not welcome their new French masters and discontent fuelled rebellions in 18001801 at Prata di Massa Marittima.
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Lucca, Palazzo Ducale
The French troops were frequently ambushed. Only the shrewd policy of reconciliation undertaken by Joachim Murat, the French commander in Tuscany at the time,
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led to peace by issuing an amnesty for all those who had taken part in the risings. This may be a good point to present a rapid historical overview of the various steps by
which the French came to power, starting from the Treaty of Luneville in 1801, when Austria ceded the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to France. The Grand Duchy was immediately suppressed to create the Kingdom of Etruria. As I pointed out above, in 1805 Napoleon established the Principality of Lucca and Piombino, which he assigned to our sister Elisa. Two years later, in December 1807, the Kingdom of Etruria was dissolved, with the region being incorporated into the French Empire and Elisa being named Grand Duchess of Tuscany. During this period, until the downfall of Napoleon, the Maremma was part of the department of Ombrone with its capital in Siena. We can now return to Montioni. Of this village, formerly known as the Comune di Elisa but now Montioni Nuovo, there still survive some remains. They include the miners’ dwellings, the alum furnace, a hot spring, water tank and commemorative pillar. In particular, a building has recently been restored to show visitors what life was like in the mining community, populated by miners, woodcutters, charcoal burners and hauliers. It also preserves the director’s building. The first holder of this office was a Frenchman naturalised a Tuscan, Louis Charles Marie Porte (1799-1843), who managed to get into the good graces of Elisa and her husband Felice Baciocchi. My sister had decided to develop the alum mines and forestry resources of Montioni to develop the Principality’s economy. In that period the mining community grew to over 400 workers employed in the
quarries, furnaces and boilers or as woodcutters and hauliers. They came from the mountains of Tuscany, Lucca and Modena and were mostly seasonal workers. If you had passed through these parts at the time, you would certainly have been surprised to see numerous dromedaries at work. Porte had the idea of introducing these exotic animals to transport alum from the mines to the port of Follonica. From Grosseto to the Maremma Laziale The city of Grosseto can be the starting point for a very beautiful and educational itinerary combining art treasures and natural beauty. To understand the region’s history, our first step has to be a visit to the State Archives in Piazza Socci, which houses important documents from the period of French rule. The nearby Museo Archeologico e dell’Arte della Maremma contains a chalice and paten, which tradition has it were gifts from Napoleon to the city’s bishop Monsignor Fabrizio Selvi. Our route continues seaward. It leads first to Marina di Grosseto and Castiglione della Pescaia, then enters the Gulf of Follonica. In the Napoleonic era Castiglione bordered the Principality of Piombino and had an important role in transporting iron and alum to and from Elba, Corsica and France. At Follonica I recommend you visit the ironworking museum, the Museo del Ferro e della Ghisa, set in the old factory. You can also see Elisa’s personal bathtub on display in the garden of Villa Granducale, now the headquarters of the Forestry Guards.
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The art collector
Cardinal Joseph Fesch
I
make an appearance in the most ma-
jestic family portrait ever painted, the Coronation of Napoleon. You can spot me in the middle of the group of observers depicted in the lower righthand corner, behind the pope. To be precise, the enormous work by Jacques-Louis David exhibited at the Louvre depicts the coronation of his wife Josephine, but this is immaterial. The painting captures an unprecedented event, the apotheosis of a man who created his own destiny, so that at 35 he alone placed the crown of Emperor of the French on his own head. But the 67
most emblematic detail is the way Pius VII is relegated to the background. I was responsible for persuading His Holiness to come to Paris to attend the splendid
ceremony, more pagan ritual
than Catholic celebration. But it is high time I introduced myself: my name is Joseph Fesch and I was born in Ajaccio in 1763. Though it is easy to typecast me as the “elderly uncle and priest”, just six years separated me from my nephew Napoleon, the second son of my sister Letizia Ramolino. My father was a Swiss captain in the service of the Republic of Genoa. He married Giovanni Geronimo Ramolino’s widow, already the mother of Letizia. I was ordained a priest before the outbreak of the French Revolution. This marked a sharp break, leading me to accept the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and then leave the priesthood in the wake of Napoleon’s first Italian campaign, when I was a commissary of the French army. It was in Italy that I discovered the wonderful world of art, which became an undying passion! But the revolutionary parabola was already declining. In 1801 Napoleon and Pope Pius VII signed the Con68
cordat which recognised Catholicism as the religion of the majority of the French, although not the state religion, in exchange for recognition of the Republic as a legitimate form of government by the Holy See. For me it was time to return to the bosom of the Church and my career really took off. I became Archbishop of Lyon and then Cardinal of San Lorenzo in Lucina in Rome, where I was French ambassador to the Holy See. I also held the office of Grand Chaplain of the French Empire. At this point there was another breakdown in relations between the pope and Napoleon. But this time I sided openly with the pope, turning away from Napoleon. I paid for it by losing all I had gained till then. I was sent into exile in Rome, where I occupied Palazzo Falconieri in 1814. Shortly after this, Napoleon’s career came to an end, while I continued to live a life dedicated only to art and charity. I never forgot Ajaccio, where I did many charitable works. I embellished it with Palais Fesch, a modern cultural foundation. On my death in 1839, it housed my rich art collection. 69
PIEDMONT
EMILIA ROMAGNA
LIGURIA
Savona Albenga
Massa
La Spezia
LIGURIAN SEA
Lucca Pisa
Livorno
MARCHES
TUSCANY
a Tusc
Grosseto
rch nA
UMBRIA
Elba
ip
go
ela
CORSICA
Arno
LAZIO
Ajaccio
Tib er
Rome
TYRRHENIAN SEA
SARDINIA SEA
SARDINIA Flu
Carloforte
me
nd
o sa
The itinerary I now want to take you on begins with Palais Fesch, where numerous exhibits still speak of me. The portraits were painted not just to commemorate the ecclesiastical rank I had reached, but also to provide direct evidence of my passion for art. In the portrait by Antoine-Claude Fleury, you see me seated at my desk engaged in drafting the Concordat. I wear the robe of a cardinal and a pectoral cross. The work by Jérôme Maglioli painted eight years after my death portrays me full length in a cassock. The numerous paintings in the background represent my love of art. Then there is a portrait by Jules Pasqualini, which shows me holding a letter and seated in an armchair with gilded ornaments. Here I am gazing straight into the painter’s eyes. The Legion of Honour is surmounted by a cross, none too subtly evoking the pre-eminence of Church
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over State. I was a churchman rather than the uncle of the Emperor! But my portraits are not just painted on canvas: the museum contains a marble bust by the great Antonio Canova, commissioned in 1807 but sculpted the following year. The medium is different but not my expression, which remains calm and composed, though my gaze is enlivened by a flash of wit. The palace courtyard contains a commemorative statue by Gabriel-Vital Dubray. A brief account of the history of this monument is revealing. It was commissioned by the City of Ajaccio, which had obtained prior imperial authorization. It was erected in 1856 to a design by Jérôme Maglioli. The City Council voted 40 000 francs to pay for it, but the sum exceeded the city’s budget and it had to resort to a loan. The artist was not free to choose the subjects of the bas-reliefs,
but had to follow the Council’s prescriptions: my consecration as archbishop of Lyon, the foundation of Christian schools and my role as patron of the arts. But at the unveiling held on August 15, 1856, the City Council was disappointed because it was said that the portraits were not a faithful likeness. The artist, however, was unabashed. On being asked to justify himself he explained he had collaborated with the painter Jules Pasqualini, who had known me personally and enjoyed my patronage.
Corsica Ajaccio
Palais Fesch unites memories of my personal history and that of the two Napoleons, the first and the third. (Napoleon II, the unfortunate son of the Little Corporal and Marie Louise of Habsburg, was Emperor of the French only in name for a few days following Napoleon’s abdication.) In particular, the Imperial Chapel in the right wing of my palace evokes the splendour of Napoleon III, who undertook to fulfil the terms of my will, neglected by the executor, my nephew Joseph. The work was designed by the architect Alexis Paccard between 1857 and 1859 on the structure of a Latin cross with a nave and side aisles and a dome set above the crossing of the transept. Jérôme Maglioli was again responsible for the monochrome decorations of the interior of
the chapel. If you examine the windows, you will see the imperial symbols united with my ecclesiastical attributes and “F” for Fesch. A Latin inscription placed on the façade commemorates me with Napoleon’s parents and Napoleon III. The crypt, octagonal in form and faced with white marble, contains my mortal remains and those of other members of the Bonaparte family: Letizia, Carlo Maria, and Prince LouisNapoléon, who died in 1997. A Coptic crucifix donated by Napoleon himself commemorates his campaign in Egypt and Syria. During the expedition to the Orient he contemplated converting to Islam to please the Arabs and even founding a new religion, but abandoned both projects. As a churchman I also urge you to visit the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de l’Assomption, the heart of the religious life of the Corsican community. Here, on July 21, 1771, Napoleon and his sister Maria Anna were baptised together. She was the third of his sisters to be given that name. None of them, lamentably, survived their first year of life. The cathedral registry still preserves his baptismal certificate, with the names of his godfather and godmother, Lorenzo Giuberga and Geltruda Bonaparte, a friend and a sister of Carlo Maria, the head of the family. Near the entrance, a plaque records Napoleon’s last wishes, in
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exile on St. Helena. If the government refused consent for his remains to repose in Paris, he wished them to be buried “near my ancestors in the Cathedral of Ajaccio in Corsica”. The present cathedral was erected on the site of an earlier church. Construction began in 1554, but it was consecrated only in 1593. Over the portal you will see the coat of arms, a castle and an eagle with outspread wings, of Monsignor Giulio Giustiniani, who began the work. The cathedral has a nave and side aisles with a short transept and long chancel. The aisles are lined with three chapels on either side. The most important is dedicated to Our Lady of Mercy. It contains a statue of the Virgin Mary, an exact replica of the effigy venerated in Savona and known to the inhabitants of Ajaccio as the Madonnuccia. Notable among the works of art that enrich the church are the murals attributed to Domenico
Tintoretto and a small painting by Eugène Delacroix of the Virgin of the Sacred Heart (dated 1822). Let me linger a little longer in my beloved city, just enough to show you around the Salon Napoléonien in the Hôtel de Ville. It has a bust of Napoleon by Antoine Denis Chaudet, and a nineteenth-century cabinet of white wood with gilt which contains the Emperor’s baptismal certificate. The unmistakable initial of Napoleon, crowned and surrounded by laurel, looms above the manuscript marked by time and densely covered in italic script. If you look closely you can read Napoleon’s name on the lefthand page and a little below it that of his unfortunate sister Maria Anna. Scholars actually debate the authenticity of this document, which comes directly from my bequest: together with other objects and furniture from my palace in Rome.
The Cardinal’s Leonardo Palazzo Falconieri on Via Giulia in Rome, the residence of Cardinal Fesch, soon became inadequate to house his immense art collection. Napoleon’s uncle was compelled to lease a second building, Palazzo Ricci-Paracciani, to store the paintings he bought on the antiquities’ market. He personally used to explore the antiquarians’ shops, where his practised eye could distinguish valuable artworks from daubs. His most sensational coup was the purchase of two parts of Leonardo’s St. Jerome (dated to around 1480) now in the Vatican Museums. One day he spotted a cropped panel depicting a lion and the body of a hermit. Some time later he discovered the rest of the panel with the head of the saint in another antiquarian’s shop.
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Ajaccio, statue of Cardinal Fesch and the Imperial Chapel
Sardinia Carloforte
In the turbulent times that I and the other members of the Bonaparte clan lived through, the churches were safe havens, places where one could express gratitude for dangers escaped with prayers and good works. Many people of faith were shining examples of charity and dedication to their community. This was the case, for example, of the young priest Nicolò Segni, who for five years, from 1798 to 1803, brought consolation to his fellow citizens of Carloforte kidnapped by pirates during a raid and taken to Tunisia in North Africa. The priest rekindled their faith in the Virgin Mary by devotion to a carving found on a
beach near Tunis, venerated as an effigy of the Mother of God (though it was probably a ship’s figurehead). When they finally returned to the little island of San Pietro, Don Segni built an oratory to preserve the image which had long been their consolation and hope. The Oratory of the Madonna dello Schiavo (Our Lady of the Slave) is called in the local dialect with its Genoese overtones the “Gexetta d’u Prevìn”, or “church of the little priest”. The tiny church contains other memorials of that tragic raid. The west wall holds the remains of an unknown slave brought from Tunis in 1988. A plaque affixed in the same year commemorates the 117 islanders who died in Africa. My nephew Napoleon contributed to the liberation
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slaves by prompting the French consul to appeal to the Bey of Tunisia; but it was only after payment of a huge ransom by King Charles Emmanuel IV of Savoy that the episode was brought to a happy end. Also in Carloforte, the main town on the island of San Pietro, you can visit the church of the Novelli Innocenti. Let me tell you a story that will take you back to the Middle Ages. In the early 13th century, a group of Crusaders who were no more than children are said to have sailed from Marseille bound for the Holy Land. The convoy consisted of seven ships, two of which sank off the island of San Pietro. Pope Gregory IX asked that a small shrine be built to their memory: the church of the Novelli Innocenti. Many centuries later, the late-baroque architect Augusto Vallea, who in 1738 had made improvements to Carloforte’s urban layout, rebuilt the ruined church. The Piedmontese style appears in the harmonious simplicity of its architecture, with the pinnacles of the façade recalling buildings by Filippo Juvarra, architect to the court of Savoy. Inside the church lies the combative admiral Vittorio Porcile, who defeated a French-Corsican fleet that included Napoleon. As my nephew has already recounted, in the itinerary to the military sites, he had sailed from Corsica to the conquest of Sardinia, but in the waters off Maddale-
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na, between 24 and 25 February 1793, he was rebuffed by the unexpected reaction of the Savoy forces. The Admiral’s family then undertook the restoration of the church, which was reopened for worship in late 1796. After this the building remained closed for a long time, until it was reopened in 1928. More recently it was carefully restored in the late 1980s.
Tuscany Massa
Our journey to places of worship continues on the mainland, with a visit to the Cathedral of Santi Francesco e Pietro in Massa. The building was erected as a Franciscan monastic church and its origins are closely associated with the humanist Pope Pius II, born Enea Silvio Piccolomini. In 1460 he granted the Marchioness Taddea Pico della Mirandola, wife of Jacopo Malaspina, Marquis of Massa, the right to build a monastery for the Friars Minor of the Observance. Less than two centuries later, in 1629, the engineer Gian Francesco Bergamini from Carrara made extensive alterations to the structure of the building, which was almost completely rebuilt. My niece, the strongwilled Princess Elisa, in 1807 ordered the demolition of the old church of San Pietro. One of the effects of that decision was that the nearby church of San Francesco and the adjoin-
Carloforte, church of the Novelli Innocenti
ing convent were required to accommodate the chapter of San Pietro and assume the double title, making it at the same time an abbey church. A few years later, in 1821, when the Diocese of Massa was established, the church of Santi Francesco e Pietro became the cathedral.
Pisa
The next leg of our journey takes us to a place whose name may sound sombre, but it is actually one of the richest and most important historical monuments in Pisa, the Camposanto or cemetery. It was founded in 1277 to contain the
sarcophagi from the Roman period previously scattered about the Cathedral and reused to hold the remains of the most famous Pisan citizens. In the two centuries that followed its walls were frescoed with important pictorial cycles (notably Buonamico Buffalmacco’s Triumph of Death, painted between 1336 and 1341). These features meant that the Camposanto, partly as a result of the Napoleonic closures of religious institutions, became one of the first public museums in Europe in the early nineteenth century. It contains a wealth of extraordinary artworks from
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suppressed churches and monasteries.
Elba
The name of the island is inextricably bound up with my nephew Napoleon, who spent ten months here in exile. Tourists visit his two residences, now museums, but they should not forget the other places, such as the shrine of the Madonna del Monte at Marciana, the oldest and most revered on the island. It can be reached by following a scenic path flanked by the 14 Stations of the Cross. Its interior preserves the likeness of the Virgin of the Assumption, painted on a block of granite embedded in the wall and dating from the 13th-14th centuries. Frescoes attributed to Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as Il Sodoma, have been discovered behind a marble altar built in 1661. Tradition has it that Napoleon came across the shrine on one of his excursions on horseback. He was struck by the beauty of the site and the wonderful views which stretch as far as Corsica. The Emperor stayed here for a short period, from August 23 until September 14, 1814, when his mistress, the Countess Marie Walewska, landed on Elba accompanied by their little son Alexandre. For a few days the three were united in the semblance of a family and the Emperor was able to repress his sorrow at being abandoned by the Empress and especially his separation from his son, the young Napoleon II.
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Grosseto
My nephew Napoleon would stick at nothing to gain his end. He even said he was willing to favour anyone who could serve his purposes at that time. He did not scruple to arrest the Pope, but was well aware of the role played by religious figures and knew how gain their favour when he needed it. He never skimped on diplomatic gifts, and a silver chalice now in the Museo Archeologico e d’Arte della Maremma in Grosseto may be an example of his personal generosity. Made in Paris between 1811 and 1813, it has a circular foot decorated with fluting and three panels with symbols of the Eucharist and the passion alternating with bunches of grapes on the body. On the cup there are three medallions with symbols of the passion and Saint Lawrence, the patron saint of Grosseto, to whom the Cathedral is dedicated. Napoleon is said to have personally given the chalice to Monsignor Fabrizio Selvi, the city’s bishop (from 1793 to 1835). The matter is much debated. It is clear, at any rate, that Selvi was one of a group of prelates sympathetic to Napoleon (called the “reds”) and awarded the Ordre Imperial de la Réunion in 1814. The chalice was made in Paris by the goldsmith J.-B. Famechon, active between 1789 and 1820. As a churchman I see in this reverse of fortune yet another confirmation that the works of men pass away, while those of the spirit endure.
Grosseto, Museo Archeologico e d’Arte della Maremma. Silver chalice
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A resolute woman Elisa Baciocchi
I
was named Maria Anna, in memory of two
sisters who died prematurely, but everyone calls me Elisa. Born in Ajaccio in 1777, I left early to study at a boarding school in Paris. After a brief reunion with my family in Marseille, I returned to Paris and in 1797, despite my esteemed brother’s disapproval, married Captain Felice Baciocchi. Fresh from his coronation as Emperor, in 1805 Napoleon made us the Princes of Lucca and Piombino. A year later our domains were extended to take in the Duchy of Mantua and the Marquisate of Carrara. In 1809 I was made Grand Duchess of Tuscany and occupied the Palazzo Pitti in Flor79
ence, which I partly embellished. Resolution was the key to my character. So much so that Napoleon often described me as “the best of his ministers”. Loyal to his style and methods, I was a tough and resourceful ruler. In just nine years, I transformed my little realm and enacted reforms such as a new penal code and the Rural Code of the Principality of Piombino of 24 March 1808. Always in the height of fashion, I emanated femininity, as you can see for yourselves by the bust now in the Musée Fesch at Ajaccio. It shows me with my hair held back by a band decorated with stars and with soft curls peeping out and framing my face. My weapons? Elegance, rationality and a skilful use of architecture. My policy of “Frenchification” often aroused scepticism among the people and they nicknamed me La Madame. But I remained unfazed. Napoleon’s downfall compelled us to leave Tuscany. We took refuge in Bologna and then Vienna, where I was imprisoned in the Spielberg. I divided the few remaining years of my life between Trieste and Bologna, where I now repose in the Basilica of San Petronio, after passing away at only 43 years old, the first of the Bonaparte brothers or sisters to die. 80
FRIULI VENETIA JULIA
TRENTINO ALTO ADIGE
AOSTA VALLEY L O M B A R DY PIEDMONT
Trieste
VENETIA
Po
EMILIA ROMAGNA
LIGURIA
Bologna La Spezia Carrara Bagni di Lucca Massa Capannori Viareggio Lucca Florence Arno LIGURIAN Livorno Capannoli Pisa SEA T U S C A N Y Piombino
ADRIATIC SEA
Savona Albenga
a Tusc
rch nA
ip
Grosseto
go
ela
CORSICA
Elba
MARCHES UMBRIA
Tib er
LAZIO
Ajaccio
ABRUZZO
Rome
TYRRHENIAN SEA SARDINIA
My journey starts here, follow me! A ring of sixteenth-century walls encloses the harmony of streets and squares with their mediaeval imprint and spacious piazzas opening out theatrically before noble residences. This is the beauty of Lucca, the city which, in the nine years of my government, from 1805 to 1814, I reinterpreted with flair and determination. Among my many schemes, I launched the great project for an aqueduct. And as a true sovereign, I would like to show you the painting which portrays me in the robes and jewels I wore at Napoleon’s coronation in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, in the presence of Pope Pius VII. The picture fully brings out the symbols of imperial power. It was only in 1929 that it was attributed to its true author, Marie-Guillemine Benoist, a painter very close in style to Gérard, an artist whom I judged insuperable. It is preserved in the Pinacoteca del Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Mansi, at 43 Via Galli Tassi, which boasts the masterpieces left by Leopold II
MOLISE
C A M PA N I E Naples
of Habsburg-Lorraine and works privately donated. Follow me now to the Palazzo Ducale, where there still lingers a distant sense of magnificence. Of grandeur, in fact.
Tuscany Lucca
Piazza Napoleone and Palazzo Ducale Finally cleared of cars, Piazza Napoleone is again the great square it was in the past. My plans for a French-style square before my royal residence aroused the ire of the citizenry. I ignored their protests and proceeded to demolish private buildings, the public archives, the Torre di Palazzo, salt warehouses and much else. I swept away the 16th-century church of San Pietro in Cortina, which contained a much venerated wonderworking image of Our Lady of Miracles. Having had the image of the Virgin moved by night, there was finally space to lay out the
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square. Because of uncertainties, delays and discussions about the design of the monument to Napoleon, I never saw it completed. The statue by Leopoldo Vannelli was delivered only after my departure and Lucca’s destiny took another turn, under a different sovereign. The pedestal today is occupied by a statue of Maria Luisa of Bourbon, the former Queen of Etruria, sculpted by Lorenzo Bartolini.
more rapidly than more demanding decorations. My household items included two different types of cups for serving chocolate, the fashionable beverage of the day, and bowls with handles for serving mousses. In 1817 Maria Luisa commissioned Lorenzo Nottolini, architect to the royal court, to complete the courtyard and rebuild the steep staircase leading to the first floor.
Palazzo Ducale, now the premises of the Province and the Prefecture, has been the pride of Lucca ever since 1316, when Castruccio Castracani built the Fortress Augusta here. Despite its symbolic value, it did not escape my Frenchifying policy. Having decided to embellish the piazza, with Giovanni Lazzarini and Théodore Bienaimé I undertook to remodel the building, left incomplete by Bartolomeo Ammannati and refashioned in the early 18th century by the brilliant architect Filippo Juvarra. In the central wing, the winter apartment of the Anziani (magistrates) was replaced by the Quartiere del Trono (throne room), where I suggest you should examine the modern reproductions of the silk wall covering, produced for the Jubilee Year 2000 on the basis of period inventories. I reserved the rooms in pure Empire style for the use of Felice and myself. Needless to say, I renewed the decor with refined neo-classical furnishings from the workshop in Lucca of the French cabinet-maker J.B.G. Youf. To showcase the new style, I focused principally on hangings and furniture, which could be installed
Porta Elisa - Via Elisa I invite you, with a touch of pride, to enter the city by the gate that bears my name. Porta Elisa, as I my brother Lucien has already mentioned, is the urban extension of the Via Cassia. A signal that the city, having been reunited with the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, was now opening up to the world and its relationship with Florence would in future be less fraught. The architect Giovanni Lazzarini proposed to radically remodel a whole quarter of the city, demolishing the churches and medieval gates. Given the limited budget, the gate was less triumphant than expected, although providentially we were able to reuse the marble from the church of the Madonna. Aligned with the gate, Via Elisa, inspired by the Parisian Rue de Rivoli, was to create a link with Piazza Napoleone. Although only partly built, its initial purpose is clear, thanks to the neo-classical portico which partially profiles the great hemicycle and straight thoroughfare of Via Elisa. Smooth transitions are ensured by the public offices of the only two state officials of the Principality: Luigi
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Matteucci, Minister of Justice, the Interior and Foreign Affairs, and the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Froussard, who was Secretary of State and the Cabinet. Respectively at 40 and 50 Via Elisa, their premises were Palazzo Matteucci (formerly known as “Palazzo delle Undici Arcate” and now the property of the nuns of the Visitation of Saint Mary, hence no longer open to the public) and Palazzo Froussard (now Palazzo Sodini). These were key elements in Lucca’s new urban layout. Their distinctively early 19thcentury design is embellished with pleasant green spaces. I feel a particular affection for the garden of Palazzo Froussard. Elongated and roughly triangular, it is known as “Elisa’s garden”. Though the symmetry of the flower beds, terraces and parterres has been altered, it jealously preserves some striking plants, to which, over the years, have been added a cedar of Lebanon, two magnolias, a holm oak, bushes and hedges. Beyond the screen of the tall buildings facing onto Via Elisa, between glimpses of the sky and the leafy tree tops, visitors guess at the presence of green spaces that are rarely open to the public. An exception is the Botanical Gardens, whose history has been recounted by Lucien, and Villa Bottini, at number 9, which stands out strikingly from the mediaeval uniformity of Lucca. Also known as Villa Buonvisi al Giardino, it dates from the second half of the sixteenth century. It is a true gem, decorated in the late 1500s with mythological and allegorical paintings by Ventura
Salimbeni. Felice purchased it for 5000 francs in December 1811. During my reign, its outbuildings were located in the nearby monastery of San Micheletto. Restored and reopened to the public, it is the current premises of the city’s Cultural Office and a convention centre. Villa Marlia Already well known in the 11th century for its hot springs, this town nestling in green foothills not far outside the city walls appealed to my female vanity. With my support it became renowned as an elegant international resort. Everything turned on the spa at the Villa Reale of Marlia, which we purchased from Count Orsetti. It has symmetrically planned interiors lined with recurrent Hellenic elements in neoclassical style and is framed by a fine portico with rows of windows at the rear. The ground floor still echoes with the dancing in the great ballroom decorated with frescoes by Stefano Tofanelli and Jean Baptiste Desmaires. I acquired the surrounding land and endowed the villa with a park worthy of its role, taking my cue from Napoleon’s garden at Malmaison. The Theatre of stone, water and statues, the lemon garden with its fish pond and statues of the Arno and the Serchio, which you can see in the upper part of the garden, were part of the original 17thcentury plan. My taste appears in the lower part of the park where I opened out the vista before the Villa. Here I laid out a lake surrounded by woods stocked with
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fallow deer, goats and merino sheep, with streams and avenues shaded by beeches, pines, oaks, lindens, plane trees, ginkgos, maples and horse chestnuts. These beauties later enchanted Maria
Luisa of Parma, who commissioned Lorenzo Nottolini to build an astronomical observatory here, known as La Specola. Since 1923 the villa and grounds have been owned by Count Pecci Blunt.
Felice and Elisa Napoleona Baciocchi I compelled my stubborn brother to accept Felice Pasquale Baciocchi as my husband. I gave him six children. He was a Corsican nobleman of Genoese origin. A successful couple, we were depicted by Stefano Lucca Tofanelli, professor of drawing and painting at the University and the first court painter, in two portraits preserved in Palazzo Orsetti, now the Town Hall of Lucca. I appear in the white silk dress with a broad neckline edged with lace worn for Napoleon’s coronation in Nôtre Dame de Paris on 2 December 1804. Felice wears the emblem of the Golden Fleece and the Legion of Honour on his Major General’s uniform in blue velvet profiled with gold embroidery. He entered the military at an early age, rose to become captain of the Royal Regiment, was cashiered by the Revolution and forced to emigrate. The Bonapartes’ innate propensity to command meant I was the true sovereign. Felice gave me his support, a good prince consort. I was taken from him all too soon, alas, and he lived a widower in Bologna, dying in 1841. Elisa Napoleona, our second child, was the only one of our children to reach adulthood. Born at the Palazzo Ducale in Lucca in 1806, she grew up in Trieste. She loved going for long rides and shooting the crossbow. She cared little for etiquette and soon showed her mother’s sternness and an energy worthy of the godfather whose name she bore. Don’t be taken in by the apparent mildness of that little girl in a simple white dress, lovingly leaning on me in the painting by Pietro Nocchi exhibited in the Musée Fesch. To be quite honest, the painting does not wholly satisfy me. The poses were too long for me, always occupied as I was with my busy schedule, but it perfectly represents my daughter’s innocent beauty. After the failure of her brief marriage to Count Filippo Camerata-Passionei di Mazzoleni and the birth of a son, she returned to Trieste as the guest of my sister Caroline in the palace I had once dwelt in. She attempted in vain to raise Napoleon Francis, the Emperor’s only son and a prisoner of the Habsburgs, to the French throne, left vacant on the abdication of Charles X. After the young man’s untimely death in 1832, she used her energy to support the rise to power of another cousin, the future Napoleon III. After the loss of her son in mysterious circumstances, she left the court. She stayed in the Veneto and then Brittany, where she engaged in fish farming and ran the agricultural estate of Korn-er-Hoüet, dying there in 1869.
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Lucca, Villa di Marlia, and the palazzina with the clock
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Viareggio and Villa Paolina Imperial influences were also triumphant in Versilia, where the fashion for summer bathing spread among the nobility. Pauline, my charming sister, was enchanted with the new fashion, and on the coast of Viareggio, in Via Machiavelli, in 1822 she undertook the construction of a beautiful mansion, now the premises of the Musei Civici, where she experienced true love with Giovanni Pacini, a musician who owned a house in Viareggio. Designed by Giovanni Lazzarini, the exterior is compact, almost solid, but internally it opens onto an intimate and secluded courtyard. In this small world, far from Parisian etiquette or the splendour of Palazzo Borghese in Rome, where Pauline lived with her husband Camillo, her stolen romance was nurtured with the complicity of the sea, amid the heady fragrance of the romantic garden. From the bedrooms and salons, decorated by the painter Federico Marsili with the customary ornaments of the period, the views ranged across the seafront, where in 1823 Pauline was granted permission to plant a double line of trees. On Pauline’s death in 1825 the villa passed to Caroline, our younger sister. In 1808, with her husband Joachim Murat, she ascended the throne of the Kingdom of Naples. She busied herself with the arts and personally supervised a campaign of excavations at the archaeological site of Pompeii. When Murat was expelled from Naples, Caroline moved to Venice, then Trieste, where she welcomed my daughter Elisa Napoleona, and finally to Pizzo Calabro, where her husband died. In Austria she again married, her second husband being General
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Francesco Macdonald. In 1830 she retired to the Palazzo di Annalena in Florence, which was magnificently restored. In those years she stayed several times in Viareggio at this cherished villa, which she restructured in memory of Pauline.
Massa
Palazzo Ducale and Piazza Aranci In the inland regions north of Versilia, Massa was attached to my duchy in 1806. I liked the idea of moving, with the whole court, to the Palazzo Ducale. Alberico I of the Cybo Malaspina family had begun building it in 1567, but it was only given its final form in the 18th century, under the guidance of the Duchess Teresa Pamphili. Following the advice first of Paolo Bargigli (who also designed the Teatro degli Impavidi at nearby Sarzana) and then of Giovanni Lazzarini, I adapted it to my needs, laying out the royal suite, rooms for the ladies and courtiers, and the great salon of the officers. It is now the premises of the Provincial authority and the Prefecture, as well as a centre for conferences and events, but feel free to peek into the courtyard enlivened by a fine portico. A monumental staircase leads to the Salone degli Svizzeri, adorned with elegant decorative motifs, and the impressive Sala degli Specchi (hall of mirrors). The courtyard also gives access to the richly ornate baroque grotto set between the ducal library and royal box of the theatre. In front of the palace, in keeping with my usual practice, I demolished an old church to lay out the quadrangular Piazza Aranci. The building permit was dated 7 August 1807. To distract attention from the demolition of the church, it is said I
Pisa,Villa Baciocchi (façade on the garden)
Scuola Normale of Pisa The building, also known as the Palazzo della Carovana, houses the Scuola Normale Superiore. Established by Napoleon in 1810 on the model of French schools and reorganized at the behest of the grand duke Leopold II, it was officially opened in 1847. The normalisti (alumni) include three Nobel laureates: Giosuè Carducci, Enrico Fermi and Carlo Rubbia.
set up a booth for holding the draw of the lottery in the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale. But I cannot recall these trivial details.
Carrara
I wanted to create a temple of art in Carrara, that Accademia at which Lorenzo Bartolini became one of the most gifted teachers. He produced many works with imperial themes and organized the production of sculpture as a true business undertaking. He was responsible for my official portrait and the bust of my husband Felice today in the Museo Civico Rivoltella of Trieste. The cast, which was found only in 1981, is a rarity in the collection of plaster casts of the Accademia, one of the few models by Bartolini to have survived the anti-Napoleonic rising that occurred in Carrara in the spring of 1814. After 1815 the sculptor was practically ostracised and many of his works destroyed.
Pisa
Palazzo Lanfranchi On the Lungarno Galilei in Pisa, I can conjure up the atmosphere of Sophie Caudeiron’s salon. It was held in Palazzo Lanfranchi, since 2007 the Museo della Grafica. Founded in 1957 by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, the museum’s collection of graphics from the 19th and 20th centuries is one of the most important in Italy and Europe. It is still named after the Pisan family that began building in 1539 on the site of an old cluster of tower-houses. In my day it was already owned by Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri and his wife Sophie Caudeiron. Andrea was my personal geriatrician, an active supporter of the Bonapartes, and the founder of the chair of surgery at the Università Imperiale di Pisa. They hailed from Massa, but with ties to Montefoscoli, where their house is now a museum. Vaccà Berlinghieri espoused the Imperial cause. Sophie was
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a leading woman of Pisa’s cultural and social life. Thanks to her, Palazzo Lanfranchi was frequented by poets, writers, politicians, scholars and aristocrats. They included the Shelleys and, in 1830, my nephew Mario Felice Francesco Giuseppe Baciocchi, accompanied by his wife Maria Teresa Pozzo di Borgo and their newborn daughter Anna. Camposanto Monumentale In Piazza dei Miracoli, the Camposanto Monumentale contains the tombs of many famous scientists and teachers from the University of Pisa. They include the marble Cenotaph of Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri, adorned with biblical episodes by the Danish sculptor Berthel Thorvaldsen in 1830. The Inconsolable, a neoclassical portrait of Lorenzo Bartolini, represents the grieving Elena Mastiani Brunacci, wife of Giovan Francesco Mastiani,
a member of one of the richest and most powerful families of Tuscany. Made sub-prefect by Napoleon, he was given the title of Comte de l’Empire and was named Chevalier d l’Ordre Imperiale de la Réunion. In 1809 he accompanied me to Paris for Napoleon’s wedding to Marie Louise of Austria. Museo Villa Baciocchi Capannoli Villa Baciocchi at Capannoli, not far from Pisa, still bears our name. Built on the ancient ruins of the castle of Capannoli, though our arms appear on the lintel of the façade, in reality it was bought by the Marquis Baciocchi in 1833, thirteen years after my death. Today it is owned by the city and houses the Museo Zoologico and a centre for preserving archeological documents. The garden in Romantic style is still notable for its dense vegetation and tall trees.
ELEGANCE AND EMPIRE There was a subtle affinity between Napoleon and me. Supremacy on the battlefield and force of arms found a strong alliance in my social and diplomatic skills. With the iron fist in a velvet glove, I interpreted the Imperial role by building villas, residences and theatres over much of Tuscany. Wherever I was, my salons glowing with gold and velvet were the settings for agreements and strategies that brought lustre to the whole family. We were both luxurious in dress, to the Abbé Chelini’s great disapproval. From Paris, a city that I took as my undisputed model, I received the fashion plates of the Journal des Dames et des Modes. In a constant quest for beauty, in Lucca I laid down the laws of fashion and an opulent way of life, calling in dressmakers and milliners to dress me and my whole entourage. Chocolate, the “food of the gods”, reached the court in 1719, brought to Europe by the Spanish conquistadors and was initially used as a medicine. The novelty immediately captivated the upper classes and became a sweet weapon of seduction at the feasts in the Palazzo Ducale.
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Piombino, Palazzo Nuovo della Cittadella, now the premises of the Museo Archeologico
Piombino
Palazzo Nuovo della Cittadella My brother Lucien has already described Piombino and its Citadel, since 2001 the Museo Archeologico del Territorio di Populonia. I lived in it between 1805 and 1807 and gave the complex a strongly functional makeover. The old stables were converted to domestic purposes (kitchens, larders, a laundry, ovens), while the first and second floor bedrooms were assigned to the court and staff. Surprising as it may seem, I preserved the 15th-century chapel, predictably renamed the Cappella Imperiale, and the polychrome terracotta Madonna and Child by Andrea della Robbia. In fact, I provided new
sacred furnishings, paintings and silver so as to give it the appearance of a private chapel. Unlike my mother and Pauline, I never did visit Napoleon during his exile on Elba. But on the mainland I helped make his stay there more comfortable. Palazzina dei Mulini, chosen as his official residence, was adapted in its spaces and decorations by architects I recommended, Paolo Bargigli and Luigi Bettarini. Bargigli was further commissioned to smarten up the rural Villa San Marino. He also designed the Teatro dei Vigilanti in Portoferraio, which Napoleon left secretly on February 26, 1815.
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Addresses LIST OF TOURIST OFFICES OF CITIES INVOLVED IN THE PROJECT Ajaccio Office de Tourisme: 3 Boulevard du Roi Jérôme Tel.:+33 (0)4 9551 53 03 www.ajaccio-tourisme.com Pisa Airport (Arrivals) Tel. +39 050 502518 aeroportoturismo@provincia.pisa.it Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, 16 Tel. +39 050 42291 Piazzavittorioturismo@provincia.pisa.it Car park, Via Pietrasantina Tel. +39 050 830253 pietrasantina@samovarincoming.it Official tourism website for the province of Pisa: www.pisaunicaterra.it San Miniato (Pi) Piazza del Popolo 1 Tel. +39 0571 42745 ufficio.turismo@sanminiatopromozione.it Pontedera (Pi) Via della Stazione Vecchia 6 Tel. +39 0587 53354 ufficioturistico@comune.pontedera.pi.it Lucca Piazzale Verdi - Vecchia Porta San Donato Tel. +39 0583 583150 info@luccaitinera.it www.luccaitinera.it www.comune.lucca.it/Turismo Piazza S. Maria 35 Tel. +39 0583 919931 info@luccaturismo.it www.turismo.provincia.lucca.it
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Bagni di Lucca Via Umberto I Tel. +39 0583 805745 Piazza Jean Varraud 1 Tel. +39 0583 805813 turismo@comunebagnidilucca.it www.bagnidiluccaterme.info Capannori Piazza Aldo Moro 1 Tel. +39 0583 428588 infoturismo@comune.capannori.lu.it www.capannori-terraditoscana.org Viareggio Viale Carducci 10 Tel. +39 0584 962233 Piazza Dante – c/o station Tel. +39 0584 46382 Infoturismo.versilia@provincia.lucca.it www.turismo.provincia.lucca.it Livorno Via Pieroni 18/20 Tel. +39 0586 894236 info@costadeglietruschi.it www.costadeglietruschi.it Elba Via Carducci 150 - Portoferraio (Li) Tel. +39 0565 914671 www.aptelba.it Grosseto Province of Grosseto – Tourist Office –Viale Monterosa 206 Tel. +39 0564 462611 www.turismoinmaremma.it MASSA - CARRARA Uffico IAT - Marina di Massa Lungomare Vespucci 24 54100 Marina di Massa (MS) Tel. 0585 240063 - 0585 816617 info@aptmassacarrara.it www.turismomassacarrara.it
Aulla Ufficio IAT c/o Palazzo comunale Piazza Gramsci 16 Tel. +39 0187 409474 info@aptmassacarrara.it Pontremoli Ufficio IAT Piazza della Repubblica Tel. +39 0187 832000 info@aptmassacarrara.it La Spezia Viale Italia 5 Tel. +39 0187 770900 Fax +39 0187 023945 iat_spezia@provincia.sp.it c/o station Tel. +39 0187 718997 iat_speziastazione@provincia.sp.it www.turismoprovincia.laspezia.it Sarzana (Sp) Piazza San Giorgio Tel. +39 0187 620419 Fax +39 0187 634249 iatsarzana@orchestramassacarrara.it Carloforte (CI) Proloco associazione turistica Corso Tagliafico 1 Tel. +39 0781 854009 www.prolococarloforte.it www.consorzioturisticocarloforte.it Savona Ufficio di Informazione ed Accoglienza Turistica di Savona: Via Paleocapa 76r Tel. +39 019.8402321 www.turismo.provincia.savona.it Albenga Ufficio di Informazione ed Accoglienza Turistica di Albenga: Piazza del Popolo 11 Tel. +39 0182 558444 Fax +39 0182 558740 Bardineto open seasonally Ufficio di Informazione ed Accoglienza Turistica di Bardineto: Via Roascio 5
Tel.: +39 019 7907228 Fax: +39 019 7907228 Loano Ufficio di Informazione ed Accoglienza Turistica di Loano Corso Europa 19 Tel. +39 019 676007 Fax +39 019 676818 Millesimo open seasonally Ufficio di Informazione ed Accoglienza Turistica di Millesimo Piazza Italia 2 – Palazzo Comunale Tel.: +39 019 564007 Fax: +39 019 564368 Toirano Ufficio di Informazione ed Accoglienza Turistica di Toirano Piazzale Grotte Tel. +39 0182 989938 Fax: +39 0182 98463 LIST OF MONUMENTS/ PLACES ON THE ITINERARY
CORSICA Ajaccio National Museum Maison Bonaparte Rue Saint-Charles 18 Ajaccio Tel: +33 (0) 495214389 www.musee-maisonbonaparte.fr Napoleonic Museum HĂ´tel de Ville Place Foch Tel. +33 (0)4 95 51 52 53 www.ajaccio.fr/ Palazzo Fesch Museum of Fine Arts Rue Cardinal Fesch 50-52 Tel. + 33 (0)4 95 26 26 26 www.musee-fesch.com Imperial Chapel of Palazzo Fesch Rue Cardinal Fesch 50-52 Tel. +33 (0)4 95 26 26 26 www.musee-fesch.com Les Milelli Route des Milelli
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Tel. +33 (0)4 95 51 52 53 www.ajaccio.fr www.napoleon.org Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta Rue Forcioli-Conti Tel. +33 (0)95 21 07 67 Grotto of Casone Place d’Austerlitz www.corsicanews.net
SARDINIA CARLOFORTE (CI) Church of the Novelli Innocenti Via dei Novelli Innocenti Tel.+39 0781 855735 Oratory of the Madonna dello Schiavo Via XX Settembre Tel.+39 0781 855735
LIGURIA Sarzana (Sp) Maison Buonaparte Via Mazzini 26-28 www.sarzana.org Fortress of Sarzanello Via alla Fortezza Loc. Sarzanello Tel. +39 0187 6141 info line Fortezza Tel +39 339 4130037 info@earthambiente.it Fortress Firmafede Via Cittadella Tel. +39 0187 614232 www.sarzana.org Teatro degli Impavidi Piazza Garibaldi www.sarzana.org Portovenere (Sp) Fortress of Castellana Loc. Le Grazie can be viewed only from outside
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Savona State Archives Via Quadra Superiore 7 Tel. +39 019 8335227 www.archivi.beniculturali.it Monte Negino – site of fighting during the first Italian campaign Sanctuary of N.S. della Misericordia di Savona - site of fighting during the first Italian campaign Albenga (Sv) Fort – Napoleonic Museum Piazza Europa Toirano (Sv) Charterhouse of Toirano Via Certosa – site of fighting at the Battle of Loano Balestrino (Sv) Stables of the Marquis of Balestrino Napoleonic cadastral museum Sanctuary of Monte Croce – viewing point for landscapes with Napoleonic battlefields Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena (SV) Observatory of Massena– viewing point for landscapes with Napoleonic battlefields Pian dei Prati viewing point for landscapes with Napoleonic battlefields Scravaion pass - Napoleonic trenches Zuccarello (Sv) Taverna dei tre diavoli place of the encounter between General Masséna and his officials Bardineto (Sv) site of fighting during the Battle of Loano Boissano (Sv) site of fighting during the Battle of Loano Loano (Sv) final retreat of the Austro-Piedmontese troops from the plain of Loano
Magliolo (Sv) site of fighting during the Battle of Loano Rialto (Sv) Sanctuary of the Madonna della Neve – defensive stronghold of the French army during the Battle of Loano Mallare (Sv) site of fighting during the Battle of Loano Altare (Sv) - stage of the itinerary point of arrival for Napoleon with the Army of Italy Quiliano (Sv) Cadibona – place of memory of the first campaign of Italy Cairo Montenotte (Sv) Parc of Adelasia – site of fighting during the first campaign of Italy Dego (Sv) site of fighting during the first campaign ampagna of Italy Palazzo Comunale Via Municipio 10 Tel. +39 019 577792 www.comune.dego.sv.it/storia Cosseria (Sv) stage of the itinerary Ruins of the Castello Del Carretto Loc. Castello site of fighting during the first campaign of Italy Millesimo (Sv) stage of the itinerary: site of fighting on the first campaign of Italy Palazzo Comunale Piazza Italia 2 Tel. +39 019 564007 www.comune.millesimo.sv.it Napoleonic Museum of Villa Scarzella Via Del Carretto 29 Tel. +39 019 564007 www.itinerarionapoleonico.com
TUSCANY Massa - Carrara MASSA (MS) Palazzo Ducale Piazza Aranci Tel. +39 0585 816111 www.provincia.ms.it Cathedral of Santi Francesco e Pietro Via Dante Tel +39 0585 42643 Malaspina Castle Via del Forte Tel +39 0585 44774 www.istitutovalorizzazionecastelli.it CARRARA (MS) Academy of Fine Arts Via Roma 1 Tel. +39 0585 71658 www.accademiacarrara.it Cave dei Fantiscritti (caves) www.cavamuseo.com FIVIZZANO (MS) Palazzo Fantoni-Bononi Museo della Stampa Via Labindo 6 www.comune.fivizzano.ms.it tel: 0585942128/52 Funerary urn of Giovanni Fantoni know as “Labindo” Church of S.Carlo – Church of the Prisons Via Umberto I www.comune.fivizzano.ms.it tel: 0585942128/52 MULAZZO (MS) Archives of the Malaspina Museum Piazza Malaspina www.archiwebmassacarrara.com BAGNONE (MS) Museo Archivio della Memoria Palazzo della Memoria Piazza Marconi 7 www.archiwebmassacarrara.com PISA Palazzo Reale Lungarno Pacinotti 46 Tel. +39 050 926539 www.sbappsae-pi.beniculturali.it
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Palazzo Lanfranchi Museo della Grafica Lungarno Galilei 9 Tel. +39 050 2216060 www.museodellagrafica.unipi.it Monumental Cemetery Piazza dei Miracoli Tel. +39 050 835011 www.opapisa.it Capannoli (Pi) Villa Baciocchi Via del Castello 1 Tel. +39 0587 607035 www.comune.capannoli.pisa.it Montefoscoli (Pi) Casa Vaccà Berlinghieri Via A. Vaccà 47 Montefoscoli Palaia Tel. +39 0587 657072 www.museomontefoscoli.it Temple of Minerva Medica Loc.Torricchio Montefoscoli Palaia Tel. +39 0587 657135 www.tempiodiminerva.com San Miniato Palazzo Formichini seat of the Cassa di Risparmio di San Miniato Via IV Novembre 45 Tel +39 0571 405295 Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta Piazza Prato del Duomo Academy of the Euteleti Palazzo Migliorati Via XX Settembre 21 Tel +39 0571 42598 Museum System of San Miniato Tel. +39 0571 42598 www.comune.san-miniato.pi.it LUCCA Palazzo Ducale Cortile Carrara 1 Tel. +39 0583 4171 www.palazzoducale.lucca.it Villa Bottini Via Elisa 9 Tel +39 0583.44214. The garden can be visited daily from 9am to 6pm. Admission free. www.comune.lucca.it
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Botanical Garden Via del Giardino Botanico14 Tel +39 0583 442160 www.ortobotanicodilucca.it Museo and Pinacoteca Nazionale di Palazzo Mansi Via Galli Tassi 43 Tel. +39 0583 55570 www.luccamuseinazionali.it Palazzo Matteucci (now owned by the nuns of Santa Maria) - Via Elisa 40 Tel. +39 0583 491974 can be viewed only from outside. Palazzo Froussard (now Sodini) Via Elisa 54. Can be viewed only from outside Palazzo Orsetti (now Palazzo Comunale) Via Santa Giustina 6 Tel +39 0583 4422 www.comune.lucca.it BAGNI DI LUCCA Palazzo alla Villa Via Monache 1 www.bagnidiluccaterme.info CAPANNORI Villa and Parco Reale Viale Europa Loc. Marlia Tel. +39 0583 30108 Only the park can be visited www.parcovillareale.it VIAREGGIO Villa Paolina (houses the Civic Museums) Via Machiavelli 2 Tel. +39 0584 966342 - 966346 www.comune.viareggio.lu.it Livorno Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori Piazza Sant’Jacopo in Acquaviva 65 Tel.+39 0586 8048 museofattori@comune.livorno.it Piombino (Li) Chapel of the Madonna di Cittadella Piazza della Cittadella The chapel is open during the day Palazzo Nuovo Piazza della Cittadella 8 Abbey church of Sant’Antimo Via XX Settembre 15 Piombino (Li)
Tel + 39 0565 32036 (Diocese di Massa MarittimaPiombino) Isola D’Elba(Li) Portoazzurro - Forte San Giacomo or Forte Longone www.comune.portoazzurro.li.it Portoferraio - Elba Biscotteria (biscuit bakery) (now Palazzo Comunale) Via Garibaldi 7 Tel. +39 0565 937111 Palazzina dei Mulini Piazzale Napoleone www.sbappsae-pi.beniculturali.it Villa San Martino Galleria Demidoff Località San Martino Tel. +39 0565 914688 www.sbappsae-pi.beniculturali.it www.infoelba.it Museo Napoleonico della Venerabile Arciconfraternita della Misericordia Salita Napoleone Tel. +39 0565 918 785 Pinacoteca Foresiana Centro Culturale De Laugier Salita Napoleone Tel. +39 0565/937380 - 917649 (Cultural Centre) www.comune.protoferraio.li.it Marciana – Elba Sanctuary of the Madonna del Monte - Località Madonna del Monte Tel. +39 0565 901041 (Diocese of Massa Marittima-Piombino). The shrine is always open No admission charge Grosseto State Archives Piazza Socci 3 Tel. +39 0564 421947 -24576 www.archivio.beniculturali.it Museo Archeologico e dell’arte della Maremma Piazza Baccarini 3
Tel. +39 0564/488750-760-752 www.museidimaremma.it Follonica (Gr) MAGMA - Museo delle Arti in Ghisa della Maremma (opening in spring 2013) Comprensorio ex Ilva - 58022 museo@comune.follonica.gr.it www.comune.follonica.gr.it/museo Villa Granducale Villa Granducale (now houses the State Corpo Forestry Guard) Via Bicocchi 2 Tel. +39 0566-40019 other places Canino (Vt) Collegiate church of SS. Giovanni e Andrea Piazza Bonaparte www.canino.info Roma Villa del Principe Borghese (houses the Museum and Gallery) Piazzale del Museo Borghese 5 Tel. +39 068413979 www.galleriaborghese.it Firenze Palazzo Pitti Piazza dei Pitti Tel. +39 055 294883 - 2388763 www.palazzopitti.it Bologna Basilica San Petronio Piazza Maggiore 1 Tel. +39 051 231415 www.basilicadisanpetronio.it
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Illustrations: Photographic archives of the Province of Lucca, Province di Pisa, Province of Grosseto, ARTEmisia Servizi Culturali S.c.a r.l., Tourist Office of the Province of Massa Carrara, Circolo Fotografico Sarzanese, Earth S.c.r.l., Giorgio Dagna, Massimiliano Nucci, Luigi Pellerano, Silvia Simi, Beatrice Speranza, Stefano Vannucchi, Enrico Zunino
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In Napoleon’s footsteps
In Napoleon’s footsteps
A journey through Liguria, Corsica, Sardinia and Tuscany
Esperienze di rete culturale transfrontaliera per la valorizzazione del patrimonio napoleonico
Ajaccio~Carloforte~Livorno~Lucca Massa Carrara~Pisa~Sarzana~Savona
www.napoleonsites.eu