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The overall design was that of a Greek cross with a massive portico of Corinthian columns. Its ambitious lines called for a vast buidling 110 metres long by 84 metres wide, and 83 metres high. No less vast was its crypt.
The foundations were laid in 1758, but due to financial difficulties, it was only completed after Soufflot's death by his pupil, Jean-Baptiste Rondelet, in 1789. As it was completed at the start of the French Revolution, the new Revolutionary government ordered it to be changed from a church to a mausoleum for the interment of great Frenchmen.
Twice since then it has reverted to being a church, only to become again a temple to the great men of France. Among those buried in its necropolisA necropolis (plural: necropolises or necropoleis is a cemetery or burying-place, literally a "city of the dead". Apart from the occasional application of the word to modern cemeteries outside large towns, the term is chiefly used of burial grounds near t are VoltaireFrancois-Marie Arouet ( November 21, 1694— May 30, 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, deist and philosopher. Biography Voltaire was born in Paris to Francois Arouet and Marie-Marguerite Daumart or D'Aumard., RousseauJean Jacques Rousseau ( June 28, 1712 July 2, 1778) was a Swiss-French philosopher, writer, political theorist, and self-taught composer. Biography of Rousseau Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland, and died in Ermenonville (28 miles northeast of Paris, Honoré MirabeauJoseph Boze Honore Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau (often referred to simply as Mirabeau ( March 9, 1749 April 2, 1791) was a French writer, popular orator and statesman. During the French Revolution, he was a moderate, favored a constitutional monarch, Marat, Victor HugoVictor Hugo ( February 26, 1802 May 22, 1885) was a French author, the most important of the Romantic authors in the French language. His major works include the novels The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables and a large body of poetry. Life and wo, Émile Zola, Jean MoulinJean Moulin ( June 20, 1899 July 8, 1943) was a member of the French Resistance during World War II. Before the War Jean Moulin was born in Bezier, France, and enrolled in the French Army in 1918, but World War I came to an end before he could see any act, Marie Curie, René Descartes, Louis Braille and Soufflot its architect.
In 1851 physicist Jean Foucault demonstrated the rotation of the Earth by his experiment conducted in the Panthéon, by constructing a 67 metre Foucault pendulum beneath the central dome. The original iron sphere from the pendulum was returned to the Panthéon in 1995 from the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers.
The inscription above the entrance reads AUX GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE ("For great men the grateful homeland").
On November 30, 2002, in an elaborate but solemn procession, six Republican Guards carried the coffin of Alexandre Dumas (1802 - 1870), the mulatto author of The Three Musketeers, to the Panthéon. Draped in a blue-velvet cloth inscribed with the Musketeers' motto: "Un pour tous, tous pour un" ("One for all, all for one,") the remains had been transported from their original internment site in the Cimetière de Villers-Cotterêts in Aisne, France. In his speech, President Jacques Chirac stated that an injustice was being corrected with the proper honoring of one of France's greatest authors.
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