A newly discovered hat with DNA evidence proving it belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte has gone on display at auction house Bonhams in Hong Kong.
Described by Bonhams as the “first hat to bear the emperor’s DNA“, it is being previewed in Hong Kong before it moves to Paris and then London, where it will be auctioned on 27 October.
The hat, one of the bicornes often seen in depictions of Napoleon on the battlefield, had been bought by its present owner at a small German auction house who did not know at the time it had belonged to the emperor.
