Intended to be given to Napoleon's son, according to his will, the Emperor's watch finally landed ... in Cuba, where it is still on display today.
Behind this mystery hides a man, the last doctor of Bonaparte.
Two hundred years after his death, many mysteries still remain about Napoleon… And in particular this one: how the Emperor's pocket watch ended up in Cuba, offered as a wedding gift to Raul Castro , the current president?
Europe 1 tells you this incredible story.
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A watch on display in ... Havana
In his will written in pen, Napoleon had asked that most of his watches, including a gold pocket watch, be given to his 10-year-old son.
But the child will never receive it.
After the death of the Emperor, she disappeared.
Yet some have sought it out.
Nothing.
Not a trace.
It is in Cuba that we can admire Napoleon's stolen watch today, behind the window of a museum in Havana.
Raul Castro, just before becoming Cuban head of state, gifted it to the museum when it reopened in 2007.
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- Napoleon, this stranger
At the end of the 1950s, this watch was given as a wedding gift to Raul Castro by Cuban descendants of a certain Antommarchi, Napoleon's last doctor, who performed an autopsy on his body a few hours after his death. .
Did the Emperor give him this watch?
Or was it the doctor who stole it?
Nobody knows.
Doctor Antommarchi, in any case, left to practice in Poland and Mexico, before settling permanently in Cuba where he died in 1837.