The French Are Planning a 'Napoleonland' Theme Park; Comme C'est Bizarre!

COMMENTARY | A report in the UK Telegraph covers a planned theme park that only the French could envision. In effect the park would be "Napoleonland," celebrating the life and achievements of France's greatest conqueror.

Besides a museum, a hotel, shops, and restaurants, "Napoleonland" which feature the following:

There will be daily reenactments of the Battle of Waterloo, where the British Army under the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian Army under Blucher defeated Napoleon, in which park visitors will be able to participate in.

There will also be aquatic displays on a nearby lake of the Battle of Trafalgar, when the Royal Navy under Lord Nelson defeated a combined French/Spanish fleet.

There will be a ski run past the frozen corpses of soldiers and horses, reenacting Napoleon's retreat from Moscow.

An actor playing Louis XVI will be beheaded daily.

Some way to commemorate the Battle of Austerlitz, when Napoleon defeated the combined armies of Austria and Russia, will be undertaken.

Mind, as someone who has desired to visit France for a while, due to wanting to see Paris before I die and Normandy, where I have ancestral ties, all I can say is, when can I get a day pass? Seeing Norte Dame, the Louvre, and the Normandy beachheads would be one thing. Being able to dress up as an Imperial Guardsman and march to my (simulated) death at the hands of other tourists wearing British scarlet will be something to dine out on forever.

The business of participatory reenacting, which in the United States has usually involved the Civil War, has always fascinated me. I have fond memories of a visit to Gettysburg which occurred during the anniversary of Lincoln's famous address. The place was filled with men in Union blue and Confederate gray, socializing, holding memorial services, and eating and drinking out the whole countryside.

I'm surprised that there has not been the idea of a Civil War theme park where tourists can don the blue or the gray and have at one another with wild abandon. It is possible that we Americans consider what southerners sometimes still call "the recent unpleasantness" with too much solemnity to have too much fun about it.

The theme park is scheduled to open in 2017 and will be on the site of the Battle of Montereau, Napoleon's last victory against the Austrians in 1814, just south of Paris.

Source: France plans Napoleonland, Henry Samuel, UK Telegraph, Jan 20, 2011