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 of him in his coronation robes, with its more glorified and distinguished idealization. Reinstated in 1861, Flandrin recommenced work on his portrait, incentivized by a retrospective commission of 20,000 francs. According to Karine Huguenaud, Flandrin's portrait is a "penetrating psychological study of the emperor", extraordinarily capturing Napoleon III's "distant and inscrutable look". Standing in his Général de Brigade uniform, Napoleon III is depicted in the Grand Cabinet at the Tuileries Palace amidst pointed attributes: a marble bust of Napoleon Bonaparte, crowned with laurel, over his right shoulder and a Napoleonic eagle in the background. On his desk are French maps