Pantheon - November 24, 08

After leaving the mall, I couldn't find Notre Dame anymore, but found instead, the Pantheon. When I parked I saw 3 huge buildings. The Mairie du Ve Arrondissement, College de France, and the Pantheon. All facing each other. It was a great site to see. Wasn't sure where I was at until I got out of the car and started walking around though.

The first building was the Mairie du Ve Arrondissement, the 5th arrondissement town hall. Work began on it under the direction of architect Jean-Baptiste Guénepin in 1846, and was completed by Jacques Ignace Hittroff in 1849. At the end of the Second Empire, from 1866-1870, Victor Caliat finished interior installations and decoration. It is characterized by its perfectly symmetrical facade, featuring four large ionic columns and large undecorated triangular pediment.Ve arrondissement, best known for Quartier Latin, replaced the old XIIIe in 1860. It is one of the oldest sections of Paris.

The Mairie du Ve Arrondissement. I never went inside though. I and I never took a picture of the college, totally forgot.

The Pantheon was built when Louix XV recovered from desperate illness in 1744. He was so grateful to be alive that he conceived a magnificent church to honor Sainte Genevieve. The design was entrusted to the French architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot, who planned the church in Neoclassical style. Work began in 1764 and was completed in 1790, ten years after Soufflot's death, under the control of Guillaume Rondelet. But with the Revolution underway, the church was soon turned into a pantheon - a location for the tombs of France's good and great. Napoleon returned it to the Church in 1806, but it was secularized and then desecularized once more before finally being made a civic building in 1885.

The Pantheon's entrance. Inside the Pantheon were at least a dozen students drawing. They were great artist.

The Pediment Relief depicts the mother country (France) granting laurels to her great men. This relief was done by David d'Angers.

The interior has four aisles arranged in the shape of a Greek cross, from the center of which the great dome rises. In the center is Foucault's pendulum. The pendulum demonstrates the rotation of the earth and was first installed in the monument in 1851. It was removed prior to the future Napoleon III returning the monument to religious use, and then replaced by Camille Flammarion during the government's anti-clerical drive on the eve of the law separating Church and State, passed in 1905. This was the first pendulum.

I loved this mural on the wall. I love the fairy behind the women. Not sure about the painting though. I will have to look into it.

Next post, the crypt at the Pantheon.