Napoleon’s hair found in Milan
On the occasion of the bicentenary of Napoleon’s death, the Milan State Archives are organizing an exhibition bringing together archives on the French Emperor. An unprecedented discovery, three locks of hair from the Little Corporal, was presented to the public.
“Not a horsehair, but three locks of imperial hair. » This was the title of the conference held this Saturday, May 7 in Milan to show the public the results of this new find. After long and serious research on the origin of this hair sample, the State Archives concluded that it belonged to Napoleon.
A path from Saint Helena
How could this hair have ended up in the archives in Milan? The explanation lies in the fact of a man: Noël Santini. The usher of the Emperor’s cabinet at Saint Helena was one of the most faithful disciples of the Corsican general. After a trip to the island, Santini returns with these curious memories. Seized for an investigation in 1817 in Italy, this unusual heritage will never be returned to him. After having waited more than two hundred years in an archive file on the Santini case, Italian researchers have again immersed themselves in this file to discover three locks of Napoleonic hair.
Proper identification
In order to certify the origin of the hair find, researchers from the University of Florence carried out DNA analyses. They first found the biological descendants of the Napoleonic family. The family tree of Caroline Bonaparte, Napoleon’s sister and who had the same DNA as her brother, has been reconstructed. Five biological samples, collected seven generations later, were compared with locks of hair attributed to the French emperor. The results of the researchers formally established that the latter belonged to Napoleon, a discovery which opens the way to new research on the Corsican general.
It is possible to discover these three locks of hair until May 17 at the Milan State Archives Via Senateo.
Clement Lefebvre