Panthéon
Neoclassical mausoleum where Foucault's pendulum proved Earth's rotation, crypt holds Voltaire, Rousseau, and Marie Curie.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Pantheon in Paris opens in 1851, when physicist Leon Foucault suspended a 28-kilogram brass pendulum from the dome and invited skeptical Parisians to come watch the Earth turn. It also traces the building's own reversals, from a church commissioned by Louis the Fifteenth in 1744, through the Revolution that turned it into a monument to Voltaire and Rousseau, and back again more than once. Listen with your eyes on the wire overhead, where a replica of that original pendulum still hangs.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Musée des Arts et Métiers
Medieval priory turned temple of invention, home to Foucault's original pendulum and centuries of ingenuity.
Hôtel des Invalides
Veterans' hospital turned imperial monument, housing Napoleon's multi-nested tomb beneath a gilded dome.
La Madeleine
Neoclassical temple built for Napoleon's army that became a church after a seventy-eight-year identity crisis.
Basilique Cathédrale Saint-Denis
First Gothic church and royal necropolis where French kings lay buried for over a thousand years.
Catholic Church of the Val-de-Grâce
Baroque royal church built on a queen's vow, with a towering dome fresco and a crypt that once held royal hearts.
Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Paris's oldest church, consecrated in 558, holding Descartes' bones and Revolution-era scars.