Modelled on its counterart in Rome, this Neo-Classical church has been used as a burial place for France's honoured dead since the late 18th century. Built during the mid 1700s, the Pantheon was commissioned by King Louis XV who, suffering from a mysterious illness at the time, vowed to create a an edifice worthy of the patron saint of Paris. Converted into a mausoleum during the years following the Revolution, the Pantheon has since seen many national heroes interred within its cavernous crypt. Buried here are philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire; writers Victor Hugo and Emile Zola; famous French resistance fighter Jean Moulin; and the inventor of the written language for the blind, Louis Braille. The first woman laid to rest here in her own right was scientist Marie Curie, who, in honour for her acheivements in the fields of physics and chemistry, had her remains exhumed from a cemetery in Sceaux and moved to Paris. Various others, including statesman Mirabeau and politician Jean-Paul Marat have been buried and since disinterred; while a number of curious 'body snatching' incidents in the Pantheon's early history left some tombs temporarily empty. Inscribed over the entrance is the phrase Aux Grands Hommes La Patrie Reconnaissante - this translates as 'To the great men, the grateful motherland.'
Transport to the Pantheon
