Enfance Impériale : Le Roi De Rome, Fils De Napoléon

Exhibition at the Château de Fontainebleau, 26 February - 23 May 2011

For Napoleon, at the height of his power in 1811, the birth of a son represented a promise of continuity for the Empire. Napoleon François Joseph Charles, entitled "King of Rome", was born in the Tuileries on 20 March 1811.

This exhibition catalogue retraces the French years (1811-1814) of the King of Rome, brings together the clothes, toys and cradles that surrounded his daily life, and evokes the dazzling events of the imperial court in his honour: the preparations orchestrated by the House of the Children of France to welcome the heir to the imperial palaces, the celebration of the birth and baptism with great pomp, the iconographic settings and the political discourse announcing the coming of a new golden age.