New Jersey estate of Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte is sold for $4.6M

Joseph Bonaparte, a former king of Spain and Naples, fled from Europe after his emperor brother Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and landed in Bordentown, New Jersey, where he built a lavish estate called Point Breeze. Joseph is pictured in a portrait from the early 19th century

New Jersey is known for many things: stunning beaches, luscious tomatoes, Bruce Springsteen and Atlantic City. Now, one small town is working to make the state synonymous with something else – European royalty.

The Garden State was once home to French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s older brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who settled there in the early 19th century and built a lavish estate called Point Breeze in the Bordentown in 1816.  

While the sprawling residence is no longer standing, city and state officials recently teamed up with preservationists to purchase the 60-acre plot for $4.6million and turn it into a public park to preserve Bordentown’s ties to the Bonaparte family and Joseph, a former king of Naples and Spain. 

‘There’s a real opportunity to celebrate the history and at the same time make this very relevant to people today who want to come and walk on the trails, learn about the land and possibly even garden on the property,’ Linda Mead, the president of D&R Greenway, the land preservation trust that helped arrange the sale of the property, told the New York Times. 

Joseph fled from Europe after his brother Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and landed in Bordentown, home to about 4,000 people back then and still today.  

The former king, who would have been about 48 years old at the time, quickly set to work building Point Breeze in the small town that sits right between New York City and Philadelphia, about nine miles south of Trenton. 

Joseph built a 38,000-square-foot mansion atop a hill on his 60-acre property, so he could be on the lookout for any hostile forces approaching. Under the grounds there was a maze of tunnels in…