The Panthéon in Paris: Who Is Buried There and What to See Inside

The hilltop had been sacred to Paris long before the Panthéon. Clovis, King of the Franks, built a church here in 508, and Saint Genevieve, who had rallied the city against the Huns, was buried on the site. In 1744 a gravely ill Louis XV vowed that if he recovered he would replace the dilapidated abbey church with a building worthy of the patron saint of Paris.

He recovered, and in 1755 Jacques-Germain Soufflot was chosen as architect. Soufflot had studied in Rome, and his design mixed a Greek-cross plan with a great dome over the crossing, reworked five times before it was fixed in 1777. The foundations went in in 1758, but money was short and work dragged on for decades.

Soufflot died in 1780 without seeing it finished, and his pupil Jean-Baptiste Rondelet completed the church in 1790. Critics had doubted the four pillars could carry such a dome, so Soufflot threaded iron rods through the stonework to hold it together.

The Revolution gave the new church a new purpose. On 4 April 1791 the Assembly decreed that it would become a temple of the nation, holding the remains of great citizens, and approved the inscription over the door. Mirabeau was the first to be placed there, Voltaire followed in July, then Rousseau. The lower windows were bricked up to make the interior darker and more solemn.

For almost a century the building swung back and forth. Napoleon handed it back to the Church while keeping the crypt as a burial place, the restored monarchy consecrated it in 1816, Louis-Philippe made it a Panthéon again in 1830, and Napoleon III restored it as a basilica.

The Third Republic settled the question: a decree of 1881 made it a mausoleum for good, and in 1885 Victor Hugo became the first person entombed there in over fifty years. Zola, Jaurès and, much later, Jean Moulin and Marie Curie would follow.

There is no written rule for entering the Panthéon, only a tradition. Someone must have embodied the values of the Republic, through their work, commitments or actions, and they or their descendants must have agreed to the honour. The choice has changed hands over time: the Assembly in 1791, Napoleon under the Empire, Parliament under the Third and Fourth Republics, and the President of the Republic since 1958.

The crypt reflects those shifts. Enlightenment philosophers lie near dozens of Empire dignitaries most visitors have never heard of, then writers, scientists, socialist leaders and resistance fighters from the 20th century. Once an entry is announced, the ceremony takes about three months to prepare.

Honours do not always mean a burial. Joséphine Baker is remembered with a cenotaph, since she remains buried in Monaco, and Aimé Césaire with an inscription, as are the Righteous of France.