Description
The Panthéon is Paris's national mausoleum, a neoclassical monument in the Latin Quarter, on the hill of Sainte-Geneviève. It was built from 1758 to 1790 as a church, and became the resting place of France's great men and women.
The portico has Corinthian columns, like a Greek temple, and a pediment by David d'Angers (1837) showing Liberty handing out crowns to thinkers on one side and soldiers on the other. The inscription reads: "To the great men, a grateful nation".
Inside, the walls tell the story of France: 19th-century paintings by Puvis de Chavannes and Jules Eugène Lenepveu on Saint Genevieve, Joan of Arc, Charlemagne and Saint Louis. Look up: three domes, one inside the other. In the middle one is the Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve by Antoine-Jean Gros, seen through the open center of the lowest.
Under the dome swings a copy of Foucault's pendulum, 67 meters long, with which Léon Foucault showed the Earth turning, here, in 1851. The original is now in the Musée des Arts et Métiers.
The crypt is a labyrinth of tombs: Voltaire and Rousseau, Victor Hugo and Émile Zola, Louis Braille, Jean Jaurès, the Resistance hero Jean Moulin. Marie Curie was the first woman buried here for her own merits. Josephine Baker lies here too.
Gravely ill in 1744, Louis XV vowed that if he recovered, he would give Saint Genevieve, patron of Paris, a church worthy of her. He recovered. But he never saw the church, nor did its architect. And by the time it was finished, it was no longer a church.
Jacques-Germain Soufflot designed a dome to rival St Peter's in Rome and St Paul's in London, all in stone and braced with iron rods, a forerunner of reinforced buildings. Work dragged on until 1790, just in time for the Revolution.
In 1791 the revolutionaries turned it into a temple of the nation. Windows were bricked up to make it more solemn. Mirabeau and Marat were declared enemies of the Revolution and thrown out; Voltaire and Rousseau remained. For almost a century it switched back and forth between church and mausoleum, until 1881. Then Victor Hugo came.
Don't miss
• Foucault's pendulum.
• The crypt.
• The Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve.
Did you know?
• Gros had to repaint the dome: after Napoleon's fall, Louis XVIII took his place.
• The story that Voltaire's remains ended up on a garbage heap is false: when his coffin was opened in 1897, he was still there.
• The outer dome, 83 meters high, is topped by a cross or a flag, depending on whether the building is a church or a secular monument.
The portico has Corinthian columns, like a Greek temple, and a pediment by David d'Angers (1837) showing Liberty handing out crowns to thinkers on one side and soldiers on the other. The inscription reads: "To the great men, a grateful nation".
Inside, the walls tell the story of France: 19th-century paintings by Puvis de Chavannes and Jules Eugène Lenepveu on Saint Genevieve, Joan of Arc, Charlemagne and Saint Louis. Look up: three domes, one inside the other. In the middle one is the Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve by Antoine-Jean Gros, seen through the open center of the lowest.
Under the dome swings a copy of Foucault's pendulum, 67 meters long, with which Léon Foucault showed the Earth turning, here, in 1851. The original is now in the Musée des Arts et Métiers.
The crypt is a labyrinth of tombs: Voltaire and Rousseau, Victor Hugo and Émile Zola, Louis Braille, Jean Jaurès, the Resistance hero Jean Moulin. Marie Curie was the first woman buried here for her own merits. Josephine Baker lies here too.
Gravely ill in 1744, Louis XV vowed that if he recovered, he would give Saint Genevieve, patron of Paris, a church worthy of her. He recovered. But he never saw the church, nor did its architect. And by the time it was finished, it was no longer a church.
Jacques-Germain Soufflot designed a dome to rival St Peter's in Rome and St Paul's in London, all in stone and braced with iron rods, a forerunner of reinforced buildings. Work dragged on until 1790, just in time for the Revolution.
In 1791 the revolutionaries turned it into a temple of the nation. Windows were bricked up to make it more solemn. Mirabeau and Marat were declared enemies of the Revolution and thrown out; Voltaire and Rousseau remained. For almost a century it switched back and forth between church and mausoleum, until 1881. Then Victor Hugo came.
Don't miss
• Foucault's pendulum.
• The crypt.
• The Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve.
Did you know?
• Gros had to repaint the dome: after Napoleon's fall, Louis XVIII took his place.
• The story that Voltaire's remains ended up on a garbage heap is false: when his coffin was opened in 1897, he was still there.
• The outer dome, 83 meters high, is topped by a cross or a flag, depending on whether the building is a church or a secular monument.