(Credit to several Wikipedia pages for the following historical account)
The Pantheon is
located in the Latin Quarter
of Paris and was originally
built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris. After
many changes, the Pantheon now functions as a mausoleum
containing the remains of distinguished French citizens. It is modeled after
the Pantheon in Rome.
The Panthéon looks out over all of Paris. Jacques-Germain Soufflot was its designer.
Within the Narthax and Naves are paintings depicting the lives of France's heroes and heroines with the likes of Charlemagne (a/k/a Charles the Great), Clovis, Louis IX, Joan of Arc, St. Genevieve, of course, Napoleon and many others.
The Cycle of the life of St. Geneviev
The Death of St. Denis
Clovis I's plea for divine intervention during the Battle of Tolbiac
The Saints' voices being heard by Joan of Arc to defend France against the English
The end of the Hundred Years' War (against England) with Joan of Arc
19 year-old Joan of Arc requesting a cross before being burned at the stake
and her ashes scattered to the wind
INTO THE CRYPTE
Some
of France's French citizens located in the mausoleum are: Voltaire (writer
and historian - buried in 1791), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (political philosopher -
buried in 1794), Jacques-Germain Soufflot (designer of the Pantheon - buried in
1829), Victor Hugo (poet and novelist; writer of Les Miserables and the Hunchback
of Notre Dame - buried in 1885), Louis Braille (educator and inventor of
the reading and writing system for the blind - buried in 1952), Marie Curey
(Nobel Prize winner, physicist, and chemist - enshrined with her husband Pierre
in 1995), and Simone Veil (lawyer and politician serving as the Minister of
Health - her remains were moved to the Pantheon in 2018; she died in
2017). In total there are more than 70
buried in the Pantheon. (Marie Curey and Simone Veil are the only women to be interned at the Pantheon.)
VOLTAIRE
MARIE CURIE-SKLODOSKA AND PIERRE CURIE
LOUIS BRAILLE
VICTOR HUGO
THE PENDULUM
Also housed in the Pantheon is the Foucault pendulum, which
is a device named after its inventor Leon Faoucault to demonstrate the Earth's
rotation. Foucault
made his most famous pendulum when he suspended a 62 lb brass-coated lead
weight with a 220 ft long wire from the dome of the Pantheon. The plane of the
pendulum's swing rotated clockwise approximately 11.3 per hour, making a full
circle in approximately 31.8 hours. In a
near-inertial frame moving in tandem with Earth, but not sharing the rotation
of the earth about its own axis, the suspension point of the pendulum traces
out a circular path during one sidereal day. Sidereal time is a time scale that is based on Earth's rate of rotation measured relative to the fixed stars.
SCULPTURES
SAINT GENEVIEVE
The
vessel containing relics of Saint Genevieve had been destroyed during the
Revolution, but a few relics were found and restored to the church, which are
in the neighboring Church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont located directly
behind the Pantheon. (Pictured below).
WALKING ABOUT THE LATIN QUARTER
After our tour, we walked the area for a ways, even stopped at a British-themed bar called The Bombardier. Both of us had a pint (my first ever!)
EATING AT ROSIE'S STEAKHOUSE
John had brisket with seared tips, candied onions and sweet pickle with coleslaw and fries - and Ketchup. :)
I had Cowboy Caviar and fries
And to end our Pantheon experience, we listened to a violinist who was across the street from Notre Dame, perform to the crowd.
Thanks for stopping by once again. Only a few more destinations until our Parisian experience comes to an end and back to reality we'll go.
Next up - the Arc de Triomphe and evening river cruise along the Seine.
