Day 16 - 09.02.2026

« Napoleon’s memorial »

Today we visited Napoleon’s residence: Longwood House. This piece of land actually belongs to France, even though it’s on British soil. It’s located on top of a hill, surrounded by gardens and has a view on the ocean. 

We freely roamed around the house that was kept as close as possible to how it originally was. The house is not so prestigious but you can feel that it was a place that ressembled him, many beds and loungers, many desks for him to write comfortably on, a big billiard table allowing him to open maps and all in all, quite a dark environment. He clearly had a preference for military foldable camp beds. These are the only kind of beds you’ll find in the house, even his deathbed. You can feel that this exile was made to force him to abandon any plans of escape and clearly Saint Helena was remote enough to make any plans for an upheaval impossible. The final message was that he was probably poisoned by some British doctors, saying they were giving him a cure for constipation and meanwhile giving him a deadly dose of mercury… The rest of the museum was mainly about how the French came to fetch his remains 19 years after his death, how they exhumed his body and how they brought it back to France. 

After leaving Longwood we headed back to Jamestown to retrieve the rest of our fresh produce from James, did some laundry and wrote some postcards. The stamps here only cost 0.50p and you can send your letter anywhere in the world. 

Tomorrow we will have another fun visit!