Panthéon

About Panthéon

The Panthéon sits at the top of the Sainte-Genevieve hill in the Latin Quarter, and it began life as a church. Louis XV commissioned it in the 18th century as a basilica dedicated to Saint Genevieve, patron saint of Paris, but by the time it was finished the French Revolution had swept in and repurposed it as a secular mausoleum for the nation's great figures. Its architect, Jacques-Germain Soufflot, drew heavily on classical Rome, and the result is a giant Greek-cross plan topped by a dome that borrowed ideas from St Paul's in London and St Peter's in Rome.

The building works on two levels. Upstairs, the vast, light-filled nave holds Foucault's pendulum, a swinging weight first hung here in 1851 to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. A replica keeps swinging today under the dome. Below, in the crypt, are the tombs of people who shaped French history and thought: Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Marie and Pierre Curie, and others who have been added over the years. The mix of politics, science, literature and philosophy makes the crypt feel less like a cemetery and more like a roll call of French intellectual life.

The dome is the other reason many people come. In the warmer part of the year there's usually access up to the colonnade around the outside, which gives a wide view over the rooftops of the Latin Quarter toward the Eiffel Tower and Sacre-Coeur. The climb is via stairs and generally runs as a guided or timed visit, so it's worth checking current arrangements before you go. The Panthéon is a paid attraction, and it sits within easy walking distance of the Luxembourg Gardens, the Sorbonne and Notre-Dame, so it pairs well with a wider day around the Left Bank.