THE PANTHÉON in PARIS, FRANCE: NATIONAL MONUMENT AND HISTORIC RESTING PLACE FOR HONOURED FRENCH LUMINARIES©

 

The Panthéon is considered to be one of the great monuments in Paris.  The name itself is the Classical Greek word for "temple".  Located in the 5th arrondissement in Paris' Latin Quarter, on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Panthéon looks out over all of Paris. 

ORIGINAL BUILDING CONCEPTION

King Louis XV

The edifice was constructed between 1758 and 1790 from designs by  Jacques-Germain Soufflot at the behest of King Louis XV of France  (1710-1774) who had vowed in 1744 that if he recovered from an illness which he had at the time, that he would replace the ruined Medieval church of the Abbey of Saint Genevieve built during the reign    of King Clovis during the late 6th  Century and construct on the same site an edifice worthy of Saint Genevieve, who had become, and is, the Patron Saint of Paris, in order to house the reliquary châsse containing her relics.  When the 6th Century church was completed Geneviève had been buried within it.  According to history, as numerous miracles started to occur at her tomb, the church was renamed Sainte-Geneviève. Plundered by the Normans during the 9th Century, the Church of Sainte-Geneviève was later rebuilt and eventually completed in in the late 12th Century in 1177.  By the18th Century, the church had fallen into ruin.

King Louis did recover, and entrusted Abel-François Poisson, Marquis de Marigny, with the fulfillment of his vow.  In 1755, Marigny commissioned Jacques-Germain Soufflot to design the church, with construction beginning two years later in 1757, and the foundation laid in 1758.  The cornerstone was laid in 1764 by the King himself; however, he did not live to see the construction's completion, which itself was delayed for economic reasons during the years preceding the French Revolution in 1789.

The structure is an early example of Neoclassic architecture, with a façade modeled on the Pantheon in Rome, surmounted by a dome that owes some of its character to Bramante's "Tempietto". 

Architectural designer Jacques-Germain Soufflot had had the intention of combining the lightness and brightness of the Gothic cathedral with classical principles, but its role as a secular mausoleum required the great Gothic windows to be blocked.

Exterior, circa 1795, showing blocked windows

The overall design was that of a Greek cross with massive portico of Corinthian columns.   Its ambitious lines called for a vast building approximately 361-feet long by 276-feet wide, and 272-feet  high. No less vast was its crypt. 

Original construction designs by architect Soufflot

Soufflot's masterstroke is concealed from casual view: the Triple Dome, each shell fitted within the others, permits a view through the oculus of the coffered inner dome of the second dome which has the fresco by Antoine Gros, "The Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve". The outermost dome is built of stone bound together with iron clamps and covered with lead sheathing, rather than made with carpentry construction, as was the common French practice of the 18th Century period. The entire Triple Dome is additionally supported by covered buttresses.

Triple Dome design by architect Soufflot

Interior view under the Triple Dome

Antoine Gros fresco "The Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve"

The foundations were laid in 1758, but due to economic problems work proceeded slowly.  In 1780, Soufflot died and was replaced by his student, Jean-Baptiste Rondelet. The remodeled Abbey of St. Genevieve was finally completed in 1790, coinciding with the early stages of the French Revolution. 

Entrance to Crypts

Upon the death of the popular French orator and statesman Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau on April 2, 1791, the National Constituent Assembly, whose president had been Mirabeau, ordered that the building be changed from a church to a secular mausoleum for the interment of notable Frenchmen, retaining Quatremère de Quincy to oversee the project. Mirabeau was the first person interred there, on April 4, 1791. 

The ashes of Voltaire were placed in the Panthéon in a lavish ceremony on July 12, 1791, followed by the remains of several martyred revolutionaries, including Jean-Paul Marat and the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  In the rapid shifts of power during the Revolutionary Period, two of the first men honored in Panthéon, Mirabeau and Marat, were declared enemies of the Revolution, and their remains were removed.  Finally, the new government of the French Convention decreed in February, 1795 that no one should be placed in the Panthéon who had not been dead at least ten years.

Interestingly, the remains of Voltaire were rumored to have been stolen in 1814, but these rumors were proven to be false by exhumation in 1897.

Fresco by Antoine Gros

In 1851, Jean Bernard Léon Foucault, who was the leading experimental physicist of his day, demonstrated the rotation of the earth by constructing a 220-foot pendulum beneath the central dome of the Panthéon.  Foucault determined that the period of rotation of the plane of the pendulum's oscillation varied by latitude—and that at the poles it would take the pendulum exactly 24 hours to complete one rotation, while at the equator no rotation would be observed. The remarkable experiment -- easily understood by an observer without scientific knowledge -- eventually helped erase the last traces of lingering doubt which the Church had against the fact that the Earth rotates around the Sun instead of vice versa -- providing definitive proof that helped vindicate Galileo, Copernicus and Giordano Bruno.

The original sphere from the Foucault Pendulum was temporarily displayed at the Panthéon in the mid-1990s, during renovations at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. It was later returned to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, and a copy is now displayed at the Panthéon.

REPURPOSING THROUGH THE CENTURIES

Twice since 1790, during the 19th Century, the Panthéon has reverted to being a church, only to become again a meeting house dedicated to the great intellectuals of France.  It was during the Third French Republic, France's form of government commencing in 1870, that building's exclusive use was decreed in 1881 to be a mausoleum.

The inscription above the entrance reads AUX GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE ("To great men, the grateful homeland"). By burying its notable people in the Panthéon, France honours them for their various achievements.  Consequently, interment within the Panthéon is severely restricted and is allowed only by a parliamentary act for "National Heroes".

Crypt of Marie Curie

The Panthéon also houses the remains of scientist Marie Curie, educator and inventor Louis Braille, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writers Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola, and other French luminaries, including its original architect, Jacques-Germain Soufflot.

By the end of 2021, the remains of more than 80 people (all men except for 6 women) will have been interred in the Panthéon -- with many being transferred from their original burial sites and re-interred there, accompanied by great ceremony.  More than half of all the interments were made under Napoleon's rule during the First French Empire between 1804 and 1815.

Funeral of Victor Hugo at the Panthéon, 1885

Initially, only men were interred in the Panthéon.  In 1907,  Marcellin Berthelot was buried with his wife Madame Sophie Berthelot, the first woman to be so interred.  Scientist Marie Curie was interred in 1995, followed in 2015 by Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion -- two heroines of the French Resistance during World War II -- and lawyer/politician/Holocaust survivor Simone Veil in 2018.

France's President Emmanuel Macron recently announced a ceremony to be held on November 30, 2021 at the Panthéon to celebrate the re-interment of Josephine Baker (1906-1975), American-born entertainer and human rights/civil rights activist who became a French citizen in 1937, and who is considered to be a World War II hero in France -- a courageous member of the French Resistance.  Upon her death in 1975, she was buried in the Principality of Monaco.  Baker, the sixth woman to be interred in the Panthéon, will be the first Black woman to receive France's highest honour of burial at the Panthéon.

In January 2007, France's President Jacques Chirac unveiled a plaque in the Panthéon dedicated to more than 2,600 people recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Memorial in Israel for saving the lives of Jews who would otherwise have been deported to Nazi concentration camps. The tribute in the Panthéon underlines the fact that around 3/4ths of the country's Jewish population survived World War II, often thanks to ordinary French people who provided help at the risk of their own lives. 

This plaque says: Sous la chape de haine et de nuit tombée sur la France dans les années d'occupation, des lumières, par milliers, refusèrent de s'éteindre.  Nommés "Juste parmi les Nations" ou restés anonymes, des femmes et des hommes, de toutes origines et de toutes conditions, ont sauvé des juifs des persécutions antisémites et des camps d'extermination. 

Bravant les risques encourus, ils ont incarné l'honneur de la France, ses valeurs de justice, de tolérance et d'humanité.

Translated into English, the plaque reads as follows: Under the cloak of hatred and darkness that spread over France during the years of [Nazi] occupation, thousands of lights refused to be extinguished. Named as "Righteous among the Nations" or remaining anonymous, women and men, of all backgrounds and social classes, saved Jews from anti-Semitic persecution and the extermination camps. 

Braving the risks involved, they embodied the honour of France, and its values of justice, tolerance and humanity.

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(Primary and Photo Sources: maierstorm.org; Treasures from Heaven Blog, projects.mcah.columbia.edu; the guardian.com;  Leburre, Alexia, The Pantheon: Temple of the Nation, Paris: Éditions du Patrimoine (2000); Inocybe at fr. wikipedia; amusing planet.com; francetvinfo.fr)

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