The Emperor's apartment occupies a wing of the castle built around 1730 on the foundations of the medieval curtain wall, on the initiative of Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, Count of Toulouse (1678-1737). It was subsequently remodeled several times, first by Louis-Jean-Marie de Bourbon, Duke of Penthièvre (1725-1793), then by Louis XVI (1754-1793), who purchased the estate in 1783 and installed a daytime apartment there for Queen Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793).
In the 1810s, Napoleon I (1769-1821) commissioned architect Auguste Famin (1776-1859) to design the apartment as it still stands today: three adjoining rooms comprising an antechamber accessible from the Renaissance staircase, a bedroom, and a bathroom, the highlight of the ensemble. The latter offers a richly decorated composition and painted decor, particularly representative of Pompeian reminiscences reinterpreted during the Empire. The bathroom has a fireplace and a tin-plated copper bathtub, installed in the place of a former alcove transformed into a triumphal arch, decorated in its spandrels with a relief of Renown and Victory. The splayed sides of the archway framing the bathtub are lined with two mirrors that multiply the space infinitely while offering the visual illusion of a portico. The walls are covered with panels painted on an ochre background, depicting trophies to the glory of the new regime, framed by antique ornaments and imperial insignia.
