The buildings house the Musée de l’Armée, the military museum of the Army of France, the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, and the Musée d’Histoire Contemporaine.
The complex also includes the former hospital chapel, now national cathedral of the French military, and the adjacent former Royal Chapel known as the Dôme des Invalides, the tallest church building in Paris at a height of 107 meters.
The latter has been converted into a shrine of some of France’s leading military figures, most notably the tomb of Napoleon.
History
Louis XIV initiated the project by an order dated 24 November 1670, as a home and hospital for aged and disabled soldiers.
The initial architect of Les Invalides was Libéral Bruant. The selected site was in the then suburban plain of Grenelle. By the time the enlarged project was completed in 1676, the façade fronting the Seine measured 196 metres (643 ft) in width, and the complex had fifteen courtyards, the largest being the cour d’honneur designed for military parades.
The church-and-chapel complex of the Invalides was designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart from 1676, taking inspiration from his great-uncle François Mansart’s design for a Chapelle des Bourbons to be built behind the chancel of the Basilica of Saint-Denis, the French monarch’s necropolis since ancient times.
Several projects were submitted in the mid-1660s by both Mansart and Gian Lorenzo Bernini who was residing in Paris at the time. Mansart’s second project is very close to Hardouin-Mansart’s concept of the Royal Chapel or Dome Church at Les Invalides, both in terms of its architecture and of its relationship with the adjacent church.
Architectural historian Allan Braham has hypothesized that the domed chapel was initially intended to be a new burial place for the Bourbon Dynasty, but that project was not implemented.
Instead, the massive building was designated as private chapel of the monarch, from which he could attend church service without having to mingle with the disabled veterans.
It was barely used for that purpose. The Dôme des Invalides remains as one of the prime exemplars of French Baroque architecture, at 107 metres (351 ft) high, and also as an iconic symbol of France’s absolute monarchy.
The interior of the dome was painted by Le Brun’s disciple Charles de La Fosse with a Baroque illusionistic ceiling painting. The painting was completed in 1705.
Meanwhile, Hardouin-Mansart assisted the aged Bruant on the chapel, which was finished to Bruant’s design after the latter’s death in 1697. This chapel is known as the church of Saint-Louis-des-Invalides.
Daily attendance of the veterans in the church services was required. Shortly after the veterans’ chapel was started, Louis XIV commissioned Mansart to construct a separate private royal chapel, now known as the Église du Dôme from its most striking feature. The Dome chapel was finished in 1706.
