Château Salé

Château Salé is one of the oldest residences still standing in Antibes, a coastal city on the French Riviera. People seek out this house mainly for its connection with the Bonapartes, Napoleon's family.

In 1794, after political troubles in Corsica, Napoleon Bonaparte arranged for his mother Laetitia and his siblings to settle here. He was a young captain of the French artillery at the time. Antibes was a strategic point on the Mediterranean coast amid the turbulent years of the Revolution. He was busy reinforcing the coastline from Nice to Marseille, and he was also involved in military operations near the Île de Lérins and Cap d'Antibes. While he was away on his duties, his family found stability in this solid old house. There is an anecdote that Napoleon himself was briefly detained, but it is disputed whether that place was Nice or Fort Carré in Antibes.

That stay was short, but it overlapped exactly with the moment he began to leave his mark on French history. This place was home to a family whose name would soon be known across all of Europe. Today, this house is counted among the several places in Antibes connected to Napoleon. If you stand here, you can picture the scene of a mother and her children, having crossed over from Corsica, settling into an unfamiliar city.