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The Panthéon (Latin Pantheon, from Greek Pantheon, meaning "Temple of all the Gods") is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris, France. It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve, but after many vicissitudes now combines liturgical functions with its role as a famous burial place. It is an early example of Neoclassicism, with a façade modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, surmounted by a small dome that owes some of its character to Bramante's "Tempietto". Located in the Ve arrondissement on the top of Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Panthéon looks out over all of Paris.
History King Louis XV vowed in 1744 that if he recovered from an illness he would replace the ruined church of Sainte-Geneviève (see entry Genevieve) with an edifice worthy of the patron saint of Paris. The Marquis of Marigny was entrusted with the fulfillment of the vow after the king regained his health. Marigny's protégé Jacques-Germain Soufflot (1713-1780) was charged with the plans, and the construction of the Panthéon began. The overall design was that of a Greek cross with a massive portico of Corinthian columns. Its ambitious lines called for a vast building 110 metres long by 84 metres wide, and 83 metres high. No less vast was its crypt. The foundations were laid in 1758, but due to financial difficulties, it was only completed after Soufflot's death by his pupil, Jean-Baptiste Rondelet, in 1789. As it was completed at the start of the French Revolution, the new Revolutionary government ordered it to be changed from a church to a mausoleum for the interment of great Frenchmen. Twice since then it has reverted to being a church, only to become again a temple to the great intellectuals of France. In 1851 physicist Léon Foucault demonstrated the rotation of the Earth by his experiment conducted in the Panthéon, by constructing a 67 meter Foucault pendulum beneath the central dome. The original iron sphere from the pendulum was returned to the Panthéon in 1995 from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. In 2006, Ernesto Neto, a Brazilian artist, installed "Leviathan Thot", an anthropomorphic installation inspired by the biblical monster. The art installation will be in the Pantheon from September 15, 2006 through October 31 for Paris' Autumn Festival Burial place The inscription above the entrance reads AUX GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE ("To great men the grateful Nation"). Among those buried in its necropolis are Voltaire, Rousseau, Marat, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Marie Curie, Louis Braille and Soufflot, its architect. A widely-repeated story that the remains of Voltaire were stolen by religious fanatics in 1814 and thrown into a garbage heap is false. Such rumors resulted in the coffin being opened in 1897, which confirmed that his remains were still present. On November 30, 2002, in an elaborate but solemn procession, six Republican Guards carried the coffin of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), the author of The Three Musketeers, to the Panthéon. Draped in a blue-velvet cloth inscribed with the Musketeers' motto: "Un pour tous, tous pour un" ("One for all, all for one,") the remains had been transported from their original interment site in the Cimetière de Villers-Cotterêts in Aisne, France. In his speech, President Jacques Chirac stated that an injustice was being corrected with the proper honoring of one of France's greatest authors. Full list of people interred See also | ||||||||
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