Pantheon

Begun as a church to Sainte-Genevieve and finished in 1790, the building was converted during the Revolution into a mausoleum for those the nation chose to honour, and the crypt now holds Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, Zola, Marie Curie, Josephine Baker and around eighty others; entry is by decision of the state, and the composition of the list has been argued about ever since. In 1851 Leon Foucault suspended a sixty-seven metre pendulum from the dome, and its slow rotation over hours demonstrated the earth's rotation directly for the first time in public. A copy hangs there now. The dome is climbed in season for a view down the Latin Quarter.

History

The hill, Mount Lucotitius, held the forum of Roman Lutetia and later the grave of Saint Genevieve, who had led the resistance to the Huns in 451; Clovis built a church here in 508, in which he and his wife were buried, and it became the heart of the Abbey of Saint Genevieve. Louis XV vowed in 1744 to replace the dilapidated abbey church if he recovered from illness, and in 1755 Jacques-Germain Soufflot was chosen to design it, a Greek cross under a great dome, modified several times until 1777; the foundations were laid in 1758, Soufflot died in 1780 and was succeeded by his pupil Jean-Baptiste Rondelet, and the church was completed in 1790. In 1791 the National Constituent Assembly turned it into a mausoleum for distinguished citizens, on the model of the Pantheon in Rome; the building, 110 metres long, 84 wide and 83 high, had its iron reinforcing rods replaced in a restoration of 2010-2020 (Wikipedia, Panthéon).

What to look for

• The crypt - Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, Curie and Baker among the tombs.
• Foucault's pendulum - a replica of the 1851 demonstration under the dome.
• The painted nave - nineteenth-century murals of Sainte-Genevieve and French history.
• The dome climb - a seasonal ascent to the colonnade for city views.

When to go

Year-round; the dome climb runs roughly April to October and closes in bad weather. The building is cold inside in winter. Mornings are quietest.

What to expect

The interior is vast, bare and cold, which some find austere. The dome climb is a separate ticket, seasonal, and involves many steps. The pendulum is a replica, not the original.

Nearby

The Luxembourg Gardens lie west; the Sorbonne is north.

Key facts