The+Pantheon

The Pantheon is a Greek style building in Paris' Latin Quarter. Now known for holding tombs of great French figures, the building was initially used as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve. Jacques-Germain Soufflot began construction in 1757, and Jean-Baptiste Rondelet finished it after Soufflot died. The Pantheon was built to celebrate Louis XV’s recovery from Gout in 1744. Construction was finished in 1790.

In 1851, a physicist by the name of Leon Foucault made a Foucault pendulum. It showed Earth’s rotation by constructing a 220ft pendulum beneath the central dome. Also, in late 2006 a “cultural guerilla movement” called The Untergunther, fixed the Pantheon’s old clockworks. Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker” was in the Pantheon from 1906 to 1922. In 2006, Ernesto Neto put his “Leviathan Thot” in the Pantheon for Paris’s Autumn festival.

Today, we can go there and see the tombs and statues of French luminaries like Voltaire, Louis Braille, Emile Zola. Victor Hugo, Antoine de St. Exupery, Marie Curie, and Alexadre Dumas.