Paris under Napoleon Each of the twelve arrondissements had its own mayor, but their power was limited to enforcing the decrees of Napoleon's ministers. After he crowned himself Emperor on December 2, 1804, Napoleon began a series of projects to make Paris into an imperial capital to rival ancient Rome. He built monuments to French military glory, including the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, the column in Place Vendôme, and the future church of the Madeleine, intended as a temple to military heroes; and began the Arc de Triomphe. To improve the circulation of traffic in central Paris, he built a wide new
Portrait of Napoleon III over Winhalter's coronation portrait. By 1884, Flandrin's painting was returned to the French government and displayed in the Palace of Versailles. Portrait of Napoleon III Portrait of Napoleon III is an oil painting of 1861 by the French painter Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, depicting France's Emperor Napoleon III standing in his Grand Cabinet. At its first presentation in the Universal Exhibition in 1862, the painting attracted praise for its true-to-life representation of Napoleon III. In 1853, the newly-appointed Emperor of the French Napoleon III commissioned Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, a pupil of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and specialized painter of religious figures, to work on a