Napoleon Museum, Napoleonic history museum near University of Havana, Cuba.
The Napoleon Museum is a museum housed in a Florentine Renaissance-style building in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, Cuba. It holds one of the largest collections of objects from Napoleon's era outside of Europe, including furniture, uniforms, weapons, paintings, and personal items.
The collection was assembled in the first half of the 20th century by two Cuban collectors, Julio Lobo and Orestes Ferrara, through purchases at European auctions. The building that houses it was constructed in the 1920s, and the museum opened to the public in 1961.
The museum displays paintings, weapons, uniforms, and personal objects that belonged to Napoleon and his circle. Walking through the rooms gives a direct sense of how a wealthy early 20th-century collector in Cuba understood and organized European history.
The museum sits in the Vedado neighborhood, not far from the University of Havana, and is easy to reach on foot from many parts of the area. Most visitors move through the rooms in one to two hours, and guided tours in Spanish are available on site.
Among the objects is a death mask of Napoleon made by his physician Dr. Francesco Antommarchi shortly after Napoleon died in 1821 on Saint Helena. Antommarchi later moved to Cuba, which creates a direct personal link between this collection and the history of the island.
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