Empire Style

The Empire style is a grander, more overtly imperial phase of neoclassical architecture and design that developed in France under Napoleon Bonaparte in the early nineteenth century, led chiefly by the architects Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine, who served as Napoleon's official designers. Where earlier eighteenth century neoclassicism looked mainly to Greek and Roman republican precedent, Empire style architecture drew on the monumental architecture of imperial Rome and added military and Egyptian motifs, including eagles, laurel wreaths, fasces and sphinxes, the last popularized after Napoleon's 1798 military campaign in Egypt exposed French designers directly to ancient Egyptian forms. The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in Paris, designed by Percier and Fontaine and completed in 1808 to commemorate Napoleon's military victories, is a signature built example of the style's triumphal, imperial character. As Napoleon's political influence spread across Europe in the early 1800s, the Empire style spread with it, becoming the dominant fashionable idiom for grand public and domestic architecture and interiors well beyond France's own borders.