Place du Pantheon
Tel. 01-44 32 18 00
Subway: Maubert-Mutualite, Cardinal-Lemoine
Open: daily
Closed: Jan 1, May 1, Nov 11, Dec 25
Pantheon in Paris (in French, le Panthéon) is a magnificent monument those construction was inspired by another Pantheon in Rome. Portico of the building is supported by 22 Corinthian columns. The dome was inspired by Saint Peter Cathedral in London. Originally Pantheon was erected between 1764 and 1790 as a Roman Catholic Church dedicated to Saint Genevieve, patron saint of Paris. After the French Revolution Church of Saint Genevieve was transformed into beautiful mausoleum, a resting place for the most notable citizens of France. This included philosophers like Voltaire Rousseau, writer Victor Hugo, as well as scientists Pierre and Marie Curie.
The first church with the patron saint of the apostles
Peter and Paul, in the Genoveva of Paris († around 502), the patron
saint of the city, but also the Merovingian king Clovis I († 511) and
his second wife Chrodechild were buried. In the 9th century, the Church
of the Apostles was renamed Sainte-Geneviève.
In 1148, Suger of
Saint-Denis founded a convent of Augustinian canons of Saint Victor near
Sainte-Geneviève. Around 1180 the old church was replaced by a new
collegiate church, which later fell into disrepair and was finally
demolished.
In the 17th century - since 1634 Sainte-Geneviève was
the mother house for all Canons Regular in France - the Genovevian
Canons (French Génovévains) planned to replace their modest Gothic-style
church with a new one in the style of the new Louis XIV period. On the
one hand they wanted to impressively demonstrate the wealth and power of
their congregation and on the other hand they wanted to create a more
appropriate place of worship for the patron saint of Paris. In 1675,
Claude Perrault, the architect of the east colonnade of the Palais du
Louvre, proposed building a church in the style of a Roman basilica, but
this was rejected.
Another 70 years passed before the final
decision for a new church was made. In 1744, building a new church again
came within the realm of possibility. As King Louis XV. was seriously
ill in Metz, he vowed that if he recovered, he would build a church on
the top of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève entirely according to the
wishes of the Genovevians. Funding for the royal construction site was
secured for a further ten years, including through an increase in the
lottery tax. The architect was chosen to be Jacques-Germain Soufflot,
who was largely unknown up to that point and had previously only
attracted attention through his work on the facade of the hospital
(Hôtel-Dieu) in Lyon. However, he had a high-ranking patron in the
Marquis de Marigny, director-general of the royal works and brother of
Madame de Pompadour, the king's mistress.
In December 1757, the
king approved Soufflot's model of a huge church in the shape of a Greek
cross. The ground plan of the new church was thus strongly reminiscent
of Byzantine or Syrian church buildings. The work on the foundation
walls was started immediately, but it took almost three years because of
the many old shafts for clay extraction, some of which ran through the
hill of St. Genoveva in ancient times. A crypt was built over the
pillars of the foundation, which occupies the area of the entire church.
The master builder Soufflot ushered in a new era with it. While he
admired the grandeur of Gothic cathedrals, he also admired Roman
classicism and its revival in European classicism. For him, this meant
that he absolutely wanted to build a domed church with a Greco-Roman
temple facade and a large dome over a column-decorated drum – like
Michelangelo had done with St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The exterior
thus revived the forms of Roman antiquity.
On September 6, 1764,
Louis XV. the cornerstone of the church he founded. Another 25 years
passed before the church was completed. When the lantern was placed on
the dome in 1790 and the work was completed, the new era had already
overtaken the original plans of the Augustinians, the king and Soufflot.
The Pantheon in Rome is the model for this Parisian church and also
for many Renaissance and Baroque churches. This only surviving antique
domed structure was also the eponym for the Parisian church.
Soufflot died in 1780 without having started the dome. It is rumored
that he died of a "broken heart" because the building that made his name
in architectural history threatened to collapse due to numerous
structural defects. The church was completed by his students Maximilien
Brébion and Jean-Baptiste Rondelet, who completed it in 1790. In
particular, Rondelet should be mentioned, who invented the reinforced
concrete beam to enable the construction of the large façade. In order
to realize this new architectural idea, new techniques were needed.
For the interior, Soufflot took inspiration from Gothic cathedrals,
replacing the heavy supports of classical art with the elegance of
slender columns and ribbed vaulting, elements of Gothic architecture. In
addition, each of the four arms of the cross is surrounded by side
aisles - as in the Gothic cathedrals. However, many details of the
original concept were changed by the revolutionaries, who, for example,
had many of the side windows bricked up.
Shortly after its completion, the leaders of the
French Revolution declared the imposing dome a national hall of fame and
thus profaned it. Important figures in French history were to be
immortalized here. This was to be done by means of memorials, but it was
also planned to bury the mortal remains of important Frenchmen in graves
of honor in the basement of the building. Under the entire floor of the
former church there is no crypt in the usual sense, but a huge system of
corridors with numerous chapels, in each of which certain historical
figures are honored, similar to how saints were worshiped in Christian
churches.
Illustrator is the list of people buried here. The
first Frenchman whose body was solemnly buried in the Panthéon was the
revolutionary leader Mirabeau in 1791. However, his body was removed
from the national shrine in 1793, having fallen out of favor again. On
July 11, 1791, Voltaire's bones were transferred to the Panthéon, where
they still rest today.
Also in 1791, the architect Quatremère de
Quincy was commissioned to adapt the building to its new role as the
national panthéon. Since then, the former church has been one of the
most important immediate buildings of the so-called revolutionary
architecture.
On March 26, 1851, the physicist Léon Foucault
succeeded in empirically proving the rotation of the earth with the
pendulum named after him in the Panthéon.
During the 19th century
the Panthéon was rededicated twice: first from the secular hall of fame
back to a church dedicated to St. Genoveva, and again in 1885 from a
church to the French national hall of fame. The trigger for the last
rededication was the death of Victor Hugo, who, after a short but
passionate debate under pressure from public opinion, finally received
an honorary grave in the crypt of the Soufflot building.
The
first woman to be buried in 1907 was Sophie Berthelot, wife of chemist
and politician Marcelin Berthelot. The family of the deceased had only
agreed to the transfer of Marcelin Berthelot's remains to the Panthéon
on the condition that Madame Berthelot continued to rest in a tomb with
her husband. The first woman to be buried in the Panthéon in recognition
of her own achievements was Marie Curie. Since then, four other women
have received this honor: Resistance members Geneviève de
Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion, and Simone Veil. Dancer and
resistance fighter Josephine Baker was also included following an August
2021 decision.
In the fall of 2007, the Panthéon also attracted
international media attention when it became known that the underground
organization les UX had secretly repaired the defective watch.
The "Pantheonization"
The reburial of a corpse or an urn in
the Panthéon is officially called panthéonization (pantheonization)
and represents a kind of "mystical exaltation" of the deceased
concerned. Only in exceptional cases were the deceased buried
immediately after their death in the Panthéon; such as Victor Hugo
and Marie François Sadi Carnot. The vast majority of people buried
in the Panthéon were not transferred there until many years after
their death. For example, the body of Alexandre Dumas, who died in
1870, was moved to the Panthéon in 2002 - almost 130 years after he
had been buried in his home town.
The panthéonisation is
still an important process in French cultural policy. Proposals for
the admission of a person to the Panthéon are made by the National
Assembly. Only the French President can make the final decision on
this.
Théophile Malo Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne (1743-1800), officer in a
battle near Oberhausen, Bavaria
Josephine Baker (1906–1975) (symbolic
burial place), American-French singer, dancer and actress as well as
resistance fighter and civil rights activist
Marcellin Berthelot
(1827–1907) and his wife Sophie
Claude Louis Berthollet (1748–1822),
chemist and physician
Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729–1811),
circumnavigator
Louis Braille (1809–1852), inventor of Braille
Pierre Brossolette (1903-1944), Resistant
Lazare Nicolas Marguerite
Carnot (1753–1823), politician and scientist
Marie François Sadi
Carnot (1837–1894), politician
René Cassin (1887-1976), author of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas
Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794), philosopher, mathematician
and politician
Marie Curie (1867–1934), chemist and physicist
Pierre Curie (1859–1906), physicist
Georges Cuvier (1769–1832),
naturalist
Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), painter
Alexandre
Dumas (1802–1870), writer
Félix Éboué (1885–1944) colonial
politician, the first black man to receive a governorship in the French
colonial administration
François Fénelon (1651–1715), clergyman and
writer
Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz (1920-2002), Resistant
Victor
Hugo (1802–1885), writer
Jean Jaurès (1859–1914), politician
Jean
Lannes, prince de Sievers, duc de Montebello (1769–1810), Marshal of the
First Empire
Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813), mathematician and
astronomer
Paul Langevin (1872–1946), physicist
Chrétien-Guillaume
de Lamoignon de Malesherbes (1721–1794), politician
André Malraux
(1901–1976), writer and politician
François Séverin Marceau
(1769–1796), revolutionary general
Gaspard Monge (1746–1818),
mathematician and physicist
Jean Monnet (1888–1979), politician
Jean Moulin (1899–1943), resistance fighter
Jean-Baptiste Perrin
(1870–1942), physicist
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), philosopher
Victor Schœlcher (1804–1893), politician, fighter for slave freedom
Germaine Tillion (1907-2008), Resistant
Antoine Veil (1926–2013),
manager and politician
Simone Veil (1927–2017), politician and member
of the Académie française
Voltaire (1694–1778), philosopher
Jan
Willem de Winter (1761–1812), Dutch admiral and marshal
Jean Zay
(1904–1944), Resistant
Émile Zola (1840–1902), writer
On the
other hand, the following personalities are not (any longer) buried in
the Panthéon:
Count de Mirabeau was the first to be buried in the
French Republic's Hall of Fame, even with a state funeral. However, his
remains were removed from the Panthéon as early as 1793 or 1794 after
his royal connections became known. The Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat
suffered the same fate. His remains were removed from the place of
worship just a few months after being transferred to the Panthéon on
September 21, 1794 (other sources state November 25, 1794).
Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle were not transferred to the
Panthéon. Napoléon rests in the Invalides (Dôme des Invalides), de
Gaulle in the cemetery of Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, where he owned a
country house.