Napoleon's tomb

In early 1840, the government led by Adolphe Thiers appointed a twelve-member committee (Commission des douze) to decide on the location and outline of the funerary monument and select its architect.

The committee was chaired by politician Charles de Rémusat and included writers and artists such as Théophile Gautier, David d'Angers, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

The Russian Shoksha quartzite, intended as an echo of the porphyry used for late Roman imperial burials, was quarried in 1848 by Italian engineer Giovanni Bujatti upon Tsar Nicholas I's special permission, and shipped via Kronstadt and Le Havre to Paris, where it arrived on 10 January 1849.

It was almost finished by December 1853, but the final stages were delayed by the sudden death of Visconti that month and by Napoleon III's alternative project to move his uncle's resting place to the Basilica of Saint-Denis, which he eventually renounced after having commissioned plans for it from Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.

[3] On 15 December 1940, the coffin of Napoleon II was transported from Vienna to be placed next to his father's, following a decision made by Adolf Hitler upon advice from his ambassador to France Otto Abetz.

Intended to boost support for collaboration in the French public, that initiative ended up precipitating a political crisis in Vichy and the abrupt dismissal of Pierre Laval by Philippe Pétain two days before the ceremony.