Waiting for the Emperor

In 1808 the French army occupied Rome. After a year, the city is annexed and declared the second city of the Napoleonic Empire, after Paris. The son of the emperor is given the title of King of Rome. The pope is taken prisoner and exiled. The Quirinale is transformed to welcome Napoleon. Rome had been waiting for five years for an emperor who never arrived.
The exhibition itinerary is divided into four sections:
1) Napoleon's Rome;
2) Roman celebrations for the birth of the King of Rome;
3) Archaeological excavations;
4) The city as it was.
Following the recovery of the antiquity, monumental projects having characterized the new imperial Rome (statues, triumphal arches, bridges, extra-urban cemeteries and archaeological excavations) are exposed . Along with these projects, there are the urban renewal projects of large areas of the city (walks of the Pincio, Campidoglio and Flaminia area - the "Villa Napoleone" - arrangement of the banks of the Tiber), which involved Roman architects such as Camporese, Valadier and Stern, and French people like Berthault and Gisors.
These large format sheets with a strong visual impact, created with great attention to detail and never exhibited so far, testify to a short season of great creative effervescence, to be traced back to the French intentions to modernize and secularise the city, while enhancing the his millenary legacy of history and art, monumental and symbolic.