Schloss Arenenberg (Napoleon Museum)

A small Italianate villa on a wooded slope overlooking the Untersee — the western arm of Lake Constance — and the most surprising museum in Thurgau. Arenenberg was the long-time home of Queen Hortense of Holland, Napoleon I's stepdaughter, and the boyhood home of her son the future Napoleon III. The house contains an exceptional collection of First and Second Empire furniture, paintings, and personal effects of the Bonaparte family.

Visit on a guided tour (English available); the gardens are free to wander outside the museum hours. The lakeside terrace is one of the great views in Thurgau, over the Untersee toward the German shore. About 30 minutes by car from Kreuzlingen; bus and ferry connections from Mannenbach.

things to do museum historic site
A story
The future Napoleon III spent his childhood and adolescence at Arenenberg, exiled with his mother Hortense de Beauharnais after the fall of the First Empire. He returned regularly as Emperor of the French and used the estate as his summer retreat — and when he died in exile in 1873, his widow Empress Eugénie bequeathed the entire property, with all the furnishings, to the Canton of Thurgau.

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