Pantheon

The view from the steps of the Pantheon!

Entombed in the crypt below are some of the great French writers including, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola and Voltaire. Marie Curie, and her husband Pierre are also here, along with many others!

This is Foucault's Pendulum which swings from a 220 ft. cable suspended from the dome above, and demonstrates the earth's rotation.



When Louis XV recovered from serious illness in the 1740's he decided to construct a church to honor Sainte Genevieve (the patron saint of Paris). During the Revolution the church was made into a pantheon, a place to entomb the good. Napoleon returned it to a church in the early 1800's, and it went back and forth a couple of times (from being a church to being a pantheon) until it was finally decided to make it a civic building for good (for the funeral of Victor Hugo).