By a quirk of historical fate, it was another Frenchman, Joseph Bonaparte, ruler over Madrid in the early 19th Century, who bequeathed to the city several of its more iconic plazas.
BBC: Madrid??s public squares
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After hastily abdicating the Spanish throne in 1814, Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte absconded with the pearl to the United States, where it and he bided their time, lying low in Philadelphia.