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
Napoleon cancer as the cause of death. Napoleon's baptism took place in Ajaccio on 21 July 1771; he was piously raised as a Catholic but he never developed much faith. As an adult, Napoleon was a deist. Napoleon's deity was an absent and distant God. However he had a keen appreciation of the power of organised religion in social and political affairs, and paid a great deal of attention to bending it to his purposes. He noted the influence of Catholicism's rituals and splendors. Napoleon had a civil marriage with Joséphine de Beauharnais, without religious ceremony. Napoleon was crowned Emperor on