Luxury in exile – at Napoleon’s country villa on Elba
Sophie Barling
Apollo, Oct. 2019

"This date, 15 August, has traditionally been a double celebration for Elba, however, it being the birthday of the island’s most famous one-time resident, Napoleon Bonaparte (who had Tuscan ancestors). His image, and his emblems of the eagle and the bee, crop up all over the island, perhaps most conspicuously on its flag, designed by the man himself: a white ground with three golden bees on a red diagonal stripe. At dusk in the medieval hill town of Marciana, teenagers smoke cigarettes illicitly by the 16th-century church of Santa Caterina – away from parental eyes, but watched over by the bicorn-sporting general in fresco form on the wall opposite...."

https://www.apollo-magazine.com/luxury-in-exile-at-napoleons-country-villa-on-elba/