For eight days in October 1882, Prince Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte stayed with us under the discreet title of Count of Moncalieri.
The son of Jérôme Bonaparte, former King of Westphalia, he was a nephew of Napoleon I and first cousin of Napoleon III. He had been a deputy, a senator of the Second Empire, a general in the French Army and Minister of Algeria and the Colonies.
After the death in 1879 of the Prince Imperial, the only son of Napoleon III, the Bonapartist succession passed to Victor Bonaparte, the son of our guest. Prince Napoléon thus found himself at the centre of the disputes over who should lead the former French Imperial House.
His stay at the Hotel de la Paz took place under the strictest incognito. According to the press, he left the establishment only in a closed carriage and carefully sought not to be recognised. The chronicler attributed such discretion to his extraordinary resemblance to Napoleon I, of whom it was said that he possessed a genuine «Napoleonic bust».
The prince left the hotel on 10 October 1882, after spending eight days in Madrid without hardly anyone managing to see him.
