The pantheon

King Louis 15, in gratitude for the cure of an illness which had almost taken his life in 1744, had a new church built for the Sainte-Geneviève abbey on the Sainte-Geneviève mountain.

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The work was entrusted to the architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot and began in 1757.

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The Constituent Assembly decided in 1791 to transform the Sainte-Geneviève church into the Pantheon of great men.

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Soufflot being dead, the architect Quatremère de Qincy was contacted.

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This blocks all the low windows - hence the current blind walls - in order to give the building a more funerary appearance.

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Mirabeau is the first personality buried in the Pantheon, followed by Voltaire and Rousseau. 

Although the church was returned to worship in 1806, the crypt retains its function as a burial place for great men.

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The Pantheon regained its definitive function when Victor Hugo was buried there in 1885.

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Among the 81 personalities buried in his crypt are many soldiers, writers, scientists, politicians, resistance fighters including Emile Zola, Léon Gambetta, Jean Jaurès, Jean Moulin, Pierre and Marie Curie, André Malraux and Pierre Brossolette .