Panthéon

The Panthéon stands on the Left Bank of Paris, crowning the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève in the Latin Quarter. Designed by architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot and completed in the late eighteenth century, the building was conceived as a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve before the Revolution transformed it into a secular mausoleum for distinguished French citizens. Its neoclassical facade, vast dome, and Greek-cross plan mark it as one of the most architecturally ambitious structures of its era in Europe.

Beneath the building lies a crypt that holds the remains of figures including Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, and Simone Veil, making it a place where French intellectual, literary, and scientific history converges in a single space. Foucault's famous pendulum, which demonstrated the rotation of the Earth, was first suspended from the dome here in 1851. Entry tickets are available to explore the monument, its crypt, and the panoramic colonnade that encircles the dome with views across the Parisian rooftops.