Rueil-Malmaison

Rueil-Malmaison is where an empire went home in the evening. The Château de Malmaison, bought by Joséphine Bonaparte in 1799, was for three years effectively a seat of French government — Napoleon worked here between campaigns, the Consulate's decisions were taken in its library — and it remained Joséphine's kingdom after the divorce: her rose garden, with its hundreds of varieties, made her the patron saint of every rose catalogue since, and the flower painter Redouté immortalised the collection. She died at Malmaison in 1814, and lies with her daughter Hortense in the town's church of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul, a Renaissance building that thus holds the quietest imperial tombs in France.

The town around the château grew into one of the leafy western suburbs of Paris, its riverbanks along the Seine belonging to the geography of Impressionism — Renoir and Monet painted within an easy walk of its bridges. Malmaison itself is now a national museum, the essential address for anyone tracing Napoleon the private man rather than the monument.

Cultural life centres on the Théâtre André Malraux, the town's principal stage, named for the novelist-minister who invented French cultural policy — appropriately, for a commune that treats its heritage as a working asset. Concerts, opera evenings, theatre and dance fill its seasons, and international artists pass through as they once passed through Joséphine's salons: Rueil has been receiving distinguished visitors, professionally, for two centuries.