Ready for a Napoleonic theme park?  Here comes Napoleonland….

Yves Jago, a French politician in the Parti Radical, is proposing a project to build a historical theme park to celebrate the life and legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte.  The theme park would include historical reenactments of political events, battles, army camps, and daily life during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic period (1789-1815). The picture above is an artist’s rendering of Napoleonland, as shown in a story by The Guardian.

The Napoleonic period is popular in France and Europe, where a number of annual reenactments of Napoleonic battles draw thousands of participants and spectators. Napoleonland would aim to compete with the Parc Asterix and Puy du Fou theme parks in France.

Napoleon Bonaparte remains a polarizing figure in French and European history.  Napoleon is criticized for promoting militarism, dictatorship, surveillance, and endless warfare by the political left, but championed for providing leadership, national unity, law, and security by the political right. The project to create a theme park in his honor is likely to provoke significant political debate within France and perhaps across Europe.

NPR reports on the Napoleonland project, as does The Guardian.

Students in HIST 423 French Revolution and Napoleon at Northern Illinois University will be interested in this story.