The Italian city that became the capital of Napoleon’s Kingdom of Italy in 1805 was Milan.
The kingdom was proclaimed on March 17, 1805, from the former Italian Republic, a French client state created in northern Italy. Napoleon was crowned king at Milan’s cathedral on May 26, 1805, famously using the Iron Crown of Lombardy. Milan served as the kingdom’s political and administrative center.
Napoleon appointed his stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, as viceroy. The kingdom initially included Lombardy and other northern Italian territories; after Austria’s defeat in 1805, the Treaty of Pressburg added much of the remaining Venetian lands. Its borders and institutions changed several times as Napoleon expanded and reorganized his rule.
Venice was an important possession but not the capital. Turin belonged to the French-annexed Piedmont sphere, while Rome remained associated with the Papal States until Napoleon later annexed those territories. The Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy should also not be confused with the unified Kingdom of Italy established in the nineteenth century.