Napoleon was a man of many and complex ambitions, one of which was to turn Paris into “the new Rome.” In this revelatory biography that doubles as a cultural history, Jaques explores what lay behind this goal and assesses how the leader’s complicated relationship with the Eternal City transformed the City of Light. Part obsession and part competition, Napoleon’s preoccupation with Rome as a model to copy and surpass was focused principally on the ancient era of the Caesars. Jaques, author ofThe Empress of Art, a study of how Catherine the Great used art to reinvent Russia, skillfully combines biography, history, and art history to tell the stories behind the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre’s Venus de Medici, and many other iconic Parisian features.