The Pantheon of Paris

History

All starts with a church…

In 1744, being with Metz and suffering of a serious disease, Louis XV makes the wish, if he survives, create a church dedicated to Sainte Genevieve. Restored and with return to Paris, it charges the marquis de Marigny, managing director of the buildings, to build the church instead of old the abbey Holy-Genevieve, then in ruin. In 1755, the marquis de Marigny entrusts the responsibility for the plans to the architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot.

The foundations are dug as of 1758. Louis XV poses the first hones the September 6th 1764, in front of an imposing prefiguration: the future gate is reproduced painted and represented life size, like a decoration in fabric tended on a frame; work is due to Pierre-Antoine Demachy.

However financial problems and the death of Soufflot in 1780 delay the construction of the building. It is finally completed only in 1790, by the associates of Soufflot: Jean-Baptiste Rondelet and Maximilien Brébion.

Catholic church with the republican temple

Between 1791 and 1793, the building is deeply modified by Quatremère de Quincy which gives him its current appearance so that it becomes a the Pantheon, i.e. a laic monument devoted to the memory of the great men of the nation. Indeed the Revolution burst meanwhile and on the proposal of Claude-Emmanuel de Pastoret, the National Assembly decides, by a decree of April 4th, 1791, to use the building which has just been completed and is not devoted yet like church, so that it serf of Nécropole to the exceptional personalities which will contribute to the size of the France: that the temple of the religion becomes the temple of the fatherland, that fall it from a great man becomes the furnace bridge of freedom . It is named “the French Pantheon” and is modified in this direction. At the pediment, the inscription suggested by Pastoret is placed: “ With the great men, the grateful fatherland ”.

Historical reversals

Under the I {{er}} Empire, by the decree of the February 20th 1806, the building is at the same time the place of burial of the great men of the fatherland and a place of worship. The crypt thus receives the coffin of large servants of the State, while in the upper part are held religious ceremonies in particular related to the imperial commemorations.

It inserted a nail crowned in the wall of the Pantheon and it hung to this nail its coup d'etat| Victor Hugo | Napoleon Small the '' - Book 2, chapter VIII, 1852

Of 1821 with 1830, the monument is not any more a the Pantheon; Louis XVIII and Charles X exclusively restore it in its function of church (devoted to Sainte Genevieve).

In its turn the Monarchie of July withdraws the Holy-Genevieve church with the catholic worship the August 15th 1830 and its destination of the Pantheon returns to him which is called then “the Temple of Glory”. David of Angers remakes the pediment and celebrates it currency “With the great men, the grateful fatherland” reappears. However during this period, nobody will be pantheonized .

Of 1848 with 1851, under the Second Republic, it will be “Temple of Humanity”, without success either for possible new tenants.

Under the Second Empire (1851 - 1870), the building becomes again a church and the inscription disappears again.

It is only since 1885, date of the burial of Victor Hugo in the Pantheon, that the Holy-Genevieve basilica does not exist any more. From now on the building is well the place of rest of the great men honoured by the République.

Structure

The Pantheon is a 110 84 meters meters long and broad building. The principal frontage is decorated with a gantry to the Corinthian columns , surmounted by a triangular pediment carried out by David of Angers. The building, in the shape of Greek cross, is crowned by a dome of 83 meters, capped high with a Lanterneau. The interior is decorated by academic painters like Puvis de Chavannes, Antoine Gros or Cabanel.

The architectural project of Soufflot

The architectural project of Soufflot is a church with dome, in form of Greek cross, i.e. with four short, equal branches in length and width. To carry it out, it borrows from various architectural styles, which will make write with Maximilien Brébion: “The main object of Mr. Soufflot, by building his church, was to join together, under one of the most beautiful forms, the lightness of the construction of the Gothic buildings with the magnificence of the Greek architecture. ”
Soufflot composed its church while drawing from various registers:

Gothic: by the structure, made up of a Nave arched, counterthrust by propping up above the Side S. It should be noted that Soufflot knew the Gothic architecture to have written a report on the Gothic architecture in 1747,
Byzantine: with the use of the Cupola S in couvrement,
traditional: the cupola with drum, with its external peristyle, is a reference to the tempietto of Bramante,
but especially Greek antique: Peristyle with six columns with entrecolonnement regular and triangular pediment (single at the time), Corinthian columns carrying a Entablature - whereas the use at the time was the square pillars carrying of the arcades (cf the church Saint-Sulpice).

Because of this mixture of the references, the Holy-Genevieve church will be regarded by Pierre Lavedan and Louis Hautecœur as the first eclectic building . It is however generally classified like neo-classic, initially for its period of construction, and by the vocabulary of the classical architecture (columns, entablature, pediment, etc) used in a will of return to ancient simplicity in reaction to the style baroque of the previous period (the frontage comprises one order like the Greek temples, and not of the orders superimposed like Saint-Louis of the Invalids, the columns of the peristyle of entry have entrecolonnement regular like the ancient temples, whereas the traditional use was to draw aside the central columns more, the same Corinthian order is useful inside and outside, etc)

From a structural point of view, the four naves are used for contrebuter the lateral thrusts of the dome. However, the recourse to the braces stone is necessary, taking into account the pushes to be contained. The gate contains an invisible metal structure. It is truly about armed stone and not simply chained as he was often practiced at the time, the provision of the reinforcements being already that of a reinforced concrete beam. However this technique of construction requires a regular maintenance, to prevent that moisture does not enter masonry and does not make rust the iron of the reinforcements which are likely in their turn to make burst the pierre.

As of 1764, this project daring is the object of protests on behalf of the catholic clergy which protests against the construction of a church whose plan on the ground would not be that of a Latin cross. Soufflot must thus re-examine its plan. It lengthens of a span the arm of the chorus (branch is), which makes it possible to create a Abside flanked of two turns sheltering of the vaults at the ground floor and the Clocher S of rise. On the other hand, it also lengthens the arm of the western branch by equipping it, with the manner of the Greek temples of Antiquity, of a kind of Pronaos, i.e. of a gantry which precedes the sanctuary.

Triple cupola

An essential component of construction remains invisible with the eyes of the visitor. Whereas one could think that only one Coupole supports the lantern and the cross at its top, actually, three cupolas are encased the ones in the others.

the external dome is out of stone covered with lead strips, and not out of frame, as it was of tradition at the time (as with Saint-Louis-of-Invalids). Its implementation constitutes a true technical prowess besides.
Of the interior, one can see a Coupole with boxes, opened in the center by a Oculus (round opening). This low cupola is based on the low part of the drum, on the level of the external colonnade, which contrebute the unit.
Between these two cupolas, external and interior, is built a third technical cupola of parabolic form (approximately, the shape of an half-egg) which supports the lantern stone, which weighs more than five tons. It is on the interior face of this cupola that is painted the apotheosis of holy Genevieve of Antoine Gros, that one can admire through the oculus interior cupola. This intermediate cupola does not consist of a continuous stone coat like the external dome: it is openwork by four arcs which make it possible to reduce the loads from the lantern towards the piles. The days, as for them, let pass the light taken by the windows partly high of the drum between the two lower cupolas for nimber the painting of the apotheosis .

One will be able to compare this method of circulation of the light with that which the predecessors of Soufflot adopted; for example, the the Pantheon of Rome and its oculus central with open sky, or the cupola of the Invalid of Paris of Hardouin-Mansart. It is it should be noted that a device with three cupolas was used with the Cathédrale Saint-Paul of London a little before, with however a dome in charpente.
One will include/understand this system of construction by examining the model produced by Rondelet: it is exposed in the vault appendix-north of the bâtiment.
One can also visualize it on Internet site of the university of Columbia, photographs of architecture to format QT with the Maquette address of the Pantheon or on celui-ci.
On another panorama one can also see the bell-towers that Soufflot had put at the origin and who were thereafter shaven.

The crypt

The Crypte covers all the surface of the building. Indeed, it consists of four galleries, each one under each arm of the nave. However, it is not truly buried like a cellar since windows, in top of each gallery, are open on the extérieur.
One penetrates in the crypt by a room decorated with doric columns (in reference to the temple of Neptune with Paestum, that Soufflot had visited during its voyage in Italy). While advancing, one discovers then, in the center of the building, the vast arched room of circular form and the small central part, located just at the center of the dôme.

One can wonder about dimensions of the crypt which appears incredibly vast. The 73 current hosts are not with narrow since the full capacity of reception is approximately 300 places.
Which could be the preliminary draft of Soufflot? One of the put forth assumptions would be that Louis XV wanted to make a mausoleum for the Bourbon of it.

Stages of construction

It was initially a question of finding money to carry out this project. One marked up the price of the three monthly lotteries, their cost passing of 20 grounds with 24, which paid: 400000 livres.
Then a ground had to be found. One decided to take it on the western part of the garden of the Holy-Geneviève.
Work began in 1758. The collected money made it possible to carry out only the foundations, because the ground was mined by the galleries which had drilled, sixteen centuries earlier, Gallo-Roman potters to extract clay. One counted at least seven 25 depth meters wells, and a hundred others, less profonds.
Finally the September 6th 1764 Louis XV posed the first stone. One had built for the occasion a reproduction of the future building, a trompe-l'oeil life size, of fabric and frame, representing the future gate of the church (a fabric of Demachy to the Carnavalet museum represents this ceremony).

Construction advanced despite everything with regularity: in 1769, the walls were bricked up and in 1776, the finished and décintrées vaults.

But the project was very disputed. Although this idea made school (the monument was imitated with Copenhagen, Potsdam, Saint-Pétersbourg), it was attacked by many detractors. The audacity of the project, but also admittedly from compressings in masonries due to a bad execution, fed make out and memories explanatory. The polemic was very sharp and it is desperate which Soufflot died the August 29th 1780 before the project was not finished. Criticisms principal tended to establish that the four groups of three columns intended to support the three cupolas, imagined by the architect, missed solidity and that the building was going to collapse.

From which comes the stones from construction?
Certainly for the majority of the careers of the Paris basin. The lower parts, to 9 feet height, come from the careers of Arcueil and make up of frank Banc famous like the Cliquart for its smoothness and its hardness of the grain.
Conflans-Holy-Honorine career of , with the confluence of the the Seine and Oise one extracted two beautiful blocks known as from royal Banc which were employed for the angles of the fronton.
Bench higher than the royal bench, one finds stones of a hardness and a a little lower smoothness, from which one extracted the blocks which were used for the capitals of the Corinthian columns.

The completion of the building by Rondelet and Brébion: 1780-1790

The continuation of work was entrusted to two collaborators of Soufflot, the architects Rondelet and Brébion helped of a relative of Soufflot, Soufflot says Romain.
For the structure, their principal contribution was to substitute solid masses pillars for the columns imagined by Soufflot to support the dôme.
They also ensured the follow-up of the building site. One will find on the Italian site Vita E operates many engravings on the construction of the church Holy-Genevieve, plans of cut of the building, sketch of machines of building site to test solidity of the stone and for the reinforcement of the stone by reinforcements of métal.
The sculptor Guillaume II Coustou carried out the pediment.

Modifications of Quatremère de Quincy to make a republican temple of it

The April 4th 1791, the constituent Assembly transforms the Holy-Genevieve church into “the Pantheon of the great men”. She charges Quatremère de Quincy with adapting the places to this new function.
The choices of the architect will modify the initial idea of Soufflot:
it changes external appearance by removing the Lanterneau and the Clocher S, become useless. Internally it seals 38 of the 42 windows, modifying thus deeply the circulation of the light inside the building. Whereas the preliminary draft was to make enter the most possible light, the obturation of the openings now plunges the base of the place in a semi-half-light. It accentuates the zenith light resulting from the oculus of the cupola with boxes, as it is the case for the austere Pantheon de Rome.
It should be noted that the removal of these windows disturbs the ventilation of the building; it increases in particular the content water and is in the beginning, the 20th century, of cracks and erosion of the structures métalliques.
In the middle of the boiling of the ideas of the French revolution, concerning the Pantheon, it is necessary to retain the idea of Charles de Wailly, finally not realized, which the building to put it at the taste of the time and to give him the character of solidity which seemed it would have consisted in modifying to miss.

The Napoleonean period

During this period, the polemic on the solidity of the building continues so much so that an interior shoring is set up. Napoleon is interested of close with the possible remedies to solidify it while proposing to put pillars out of cast iron to support the dome. He allots a sum of: 600000 francs with the repair of the building and, on the councils of its architect, Mr. Fontaine, it charges Rondelet with this application.
Finally the only realization will be, with the back of the building, the construction of a monumental staircase to go down in the crypt.

Elements of decorations

Passed these stages of construction, the building will not undergo any more modification of structure.

With the liking of the history of, First Empire at the beginning of the Fourth Republic, each capacity in place will use the destination of this building like the assertion of its design of the State, and in particular of his relationship with the capacity religieux.
The study and the observation of the various elements of the interior and external decorations - in turn Christian, patriotic, republican, freemasons, philosophical - give an account of the rough political debates of each période.
Those which were retained then withdrawn, those which were modified, those which survived, just like the refused projects, the whole of these choices constitutes an illustration of the official art of the moment.

the French revolution
the Napoleonean period
the First and Second Restoration 1814-1830
the Restoration of Louis-Philippe 1830-1848
the Second Republic 1848-1851
the Second Worsens 1851-1871
the Commune of Paris 1871
the Third Republic 1871-1940
the Fourth Republic 1946-1958
the Fifth Republic since 1958

the French revolution

The religious symbols are removed and the pediment is modified to accommodate a revolutionary reason. Fragments of the primitive pediment are still visible in the arm-south of the crypt, in particular a profile of Louis XVI.
The new reason, of the sculptor Jean Guillaume Moitte who completes the execution in 1793 of it, represents the Fatherland crowning the Virtue, while Freedom seizes by their mane two lions attached to a tank which crushes the Despotism, and which a genius terrace Superstition.
The inscription “With the great men the grateful Fatherland” is apposée.
there Above the side doors two low-reliefs are posed: on the left, “the State education”, works of Lesueur; on the right, “patriotic Devotion”, works of Chaudet.

At the time of the Battle 13 meadow year II, the vessel the Avenger, belonging to the squadron of Brest, dark while delivering battles against an English squadron which wanted to prevent the passage of 160 ships coming from America, charged with corn, to ensure the supply of the French. The legend tells that during the shipwreck of the boat the sailors shouted “Lives the Nation! Live the Republic”. Convention issues whereas a model of the boat would be suspended on the vault of the Pantheon and that the names of the members of the crew would be engraved on the columns of the monument. The Thermidor 9 prevented this réalisation.
Later, a statue commemorating the event will be placed along one of the pillars (unknown date).

Saint-Just proposes that the names of the victories are registered on its walls and that books are deposited there, bearing the name of all those which contributed to the Revolution or which will have died about it or will have suffered from it.

the Napoleonean period

Napoleon returns to the building his function of church but it installs in the crypt of the dignitaries of the Empire.

In 1801, To summon made there transport the organ of the English Benedictines.

Since 1806, the architect Rondelet is charged to consolidate the pillars of the dome and in 1811 one orders from Antoine Gros a painting representing the apotheosis of holy Genevieve. In this painting, the Emperor occupied an important place naturally, holding with the hand the Civil code French. The political changes of 1815 required transformations in the characters represented. [More…]

On the pendentive ones, painted Carvallo, according to drawings of Gerard, Allegory S relative to the first Empire: glory, Death, the Fatherland, Justice.

A monumental staircase is built to go down in the crypt.

the First and Second Restoration 1814-1830

Louis XVIII decides to return the building to its destination first: the January 3rd 1822, feastday of the owner of Paris, the church is inaugurated. The pediment is modified consequently. It now represents a stone cross in the middle of fulgurating rays; the formula “With the great men the grateful fatherland” is replaced by the inscription “ D.O.M. sub invocat. S. Genovefae. Lud. XV dicavit. Lud. XVIII restituit ”

One arranges the vault, located under the old northern bell-tower, with a decoration of orange pilasters and a stone cupola, cupola with boxes decorated with finely carved pinks.

The painting of Antoine Gros, altered, is visited by the king Charles X in 1824. It will be completed on this date or in 1827 according to the authors.

Restoration of Louis-Philippe 1830-1848

Louis-Philippe again transforms the building into the Pantheon.

In 1837 one orders from Nanteuil three Bas-relief S in the center of the Péristyle, to replace those of the revolutionary age. Thus is from now on above the central door the Apotheosis of the hero died for the fatherland , framed by Sciences and Arts and the Magistrature .

Between 1831 and 1837, David of Angers carries out a sculpture for the pediment the Fatherland crowning the famous men . The plaster of this Bas-relief is visible with the David gallery of Angers with Angers. He will be assisted in this work by Hippolyte Maindron.
The reason represents in the center the Fatherland distributing of the crowns to the great men, between the Freedom on the right which give the crowns and the History on the left which registers on its tables the noms.

See also: List of the people quoted in the Pantheon de Paris#Personnes present on the pediment of David of Angers, Nobody quoted in the Pantheon of Paris

In 1837, the government tries to make remove the effigy of Lafayette, which David refuses with obstinacy, supported in that by the liberal press. Also the pediment it is revealed without official ceremony.

The inscription: “ With the great men the grateful Fatherland ” is positioned back.

Finally one decides to surround the monument of a grid with palmettes. Its drawing, as that of the two bronze candelabra, are due to Louis-Pierre Baltard architect and engraver. The realization is entrusted by it to the Destouches architect.

Baltard also restores the lantern of the dome, removed with the Revolution.

the Second Republic 1848-1851

In 1848, Ledru-Rollin and the provisional government place order to the painter Chevanard of interior decoration. It carries out during three of impassioned research. He imagines to carry out a history of humanity and his moral evolution, interpreted like a succession of transformations having to lead to a general and providential end. The left part would represent the pagan era; the chorus, with a Preaching of the Gospel , would appear the ancient end of time and the beginning of new times. On the right, of the frescos modern times would illustrate. Finally on paving would be placed, in the center, a gigantic synthesis of the “Philosophy of the history”, new School of Athens of the 19th century, surrounded by the “Hell”, the “Purgatory”, “Resurrection” and the “Paradise”.

This project is stopped by the decree of 1851 (see the section Second Empire).

It is during year 1851 that the attraction created by the oscillations of a pendulum 67 meters length fixed on the nave by Jean Bernard Leon Foucault intrigue a great number of visitors.

the Second Worsens 1851-1871

December 6th, 1851, the future Napoleon III retransforme the Pantheon in national basilica, dedicated to holy Genevieve. The inauguration takes place on January 3rd, 1852.
One surrounds by boards the tombs of Rousseau and Voltaire so that they are not visible any more.

The order placed to the painter Chevanard is stopped. Its project, presented in 1855, had again caused the polemic. The prince-president, who returned the building to the catholic worship, could not find, in this encyclopedic syncretism, a sufficiently strong assertion of the role of the Church in the constitution of the State français.
(The paperboards preparatory of Chevanard are currently with the museum of Lyon.)
Religious furniture is then positioned back and one removes the inscription “With the great men the grateful Fatherland”.
The church becomes the seat of a chapter of canons the “Chaplains of Holy Genevieve”. The need for large organ is felt. In November 1852, the brilliant organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-coll proposes the project of a new organ in the Holy-Genevieve church. The December 17th according to, the Minister of Interior Department signs the market, of an amount of 20.000 francs. In 1853, Cavaillé-coll produces and installs the new instrument, one eight feet of two keyboard-pedals and 21 plays, which takes part thus in the service of the Liturgie. Clément Loret is the holder.

The State orders from Hippolyte Maindron two groups of statues to be placed under the peristyle of entry: Attila and Holy Genevieve (1857) and the conversion of Clovis by holy Remi (1865). These two great units were returned to the reserves of the museums at the time of the last restoration of the monument, and are not thus more on the spot today. These works remain nevertheless visible with the museum of Angers.

The two side doors are posed: out of bronze, drawn by Constant-Dufeux, they recall at the same time the figure of holy Genevieve and the inscription of the frontage: With the great men, the grateful Fatherland . They carry year MDCCCL (1850).

the Commune of Paris 1871

François Jourde, communard, announce with crowd that the Pantheon will be withdrawn with the religious worship to be affected with the worship of the great men. The March 31st 1871, one hoists a red flag at the top of the édifice.
The April 2nd 1871 the small branches of the cross which surmounts the building are sawn and a red flag is planted with the sommet.

the Third Republic

The Louvet architect proceeds to restorations and, in July 1873, it replaces the cross at the top of the dome.

However at the time of the burial of Victor Hugo in 1885, one decides to again transform the Holy-Genevieve church into panthéon.
Religious furniture is removed and one gives the inscription “ To the great men the grateful Fatherland ”. The organ is made hear last once in this place, because in 1891, by agreement between the departments of the war and public works, the organ is affected with the church of the military hospital of the Valley-of-Grace where it is transferred the same year by the factor Merklin.

An order placed by the marquis de Chennevières, in 1874, for the realization of major cycle of painting on the French history. These oils on strengthened fabric are hung in front of the windows sealed by Quatremère de Quincy, making thus quasi-définitivement impossible the return to the preliminary draft of Soufflot.

One can notice:
- The decorative continuation devoted to Holy Genevieve, by Puvis de Chavannes
- the preaching of holy Denis , by Galand
- the martyrdom of saint Denis , by Bonnat
- holy Genevieve returns the calm one to Parisian to the approach of Attila , by Delaunay
- life of holy Louis , by Cabanel
- history of Jeanne d' Arc , by Lenepveu
- the death of holy Genevieve , by Jean-Paul Laurens
- the Battle of Tolbiac and baptism of Clovis , by White Paul-Joseph
- the idea of the Fatherland, Abundance, the Thatched cottage, the Plague , by Humbert
- Charlemagne crowned emperor protecting Arts , by Henri-Léopold Levy

From 1875 to 1884, Ernest Hébert carries out the mosaic of the apse, representative Christ showing with the angel of France the destinies of its people (ANGELVM GALLIÆ CVSTODEM CHRISTVS PATRIÆ FATA DOCET). On its line the angel, upright, carrying a sword then, at knees, the Town of Paris carrying the Scilicet; in its left, holy Genevieve upright and, in knees, Jeanne d' Arc holding a flag. This representation illustrates the debates which could agitate the beginnings of the Third republic between laic and catholic: on the five characters represented, four have an aureole, of which that representing the Town of Paris; Jeanne d' Arc on the other hand does not carry from there. She will be canonized by the Catholic church only in 1920.

A sculpture of Mirabeau is ordered from Jean-Antoine Injalbert. In same time, one orders from Rodin a monument with the glory of Victor Hugo. The project had been conceived by Edward Lockroy, in homage to the great men of the French history. It was to comprise hundred sculptures which would have been placed in the northern transept. The idea was to reconstitute the national pride put at evil by the recent defeat of 1870 vis-a-vis the Prussians. However the committee charged to judge works concludes that the proposals of Rodin are not harmonized with the statue of Mirabeau. It is thus this statue alone which is placed behind the furnace bridge.

From 1902 to 1905, Detailed Edouard painted Towards glory , qualified pictorial anthem with the Republic. Two sculptures of the beginning of the 20th century are installed in the transept. Vis-a-vis that of Landowski in north dedicated “To the memory of the artists whose name lost” finds that of Bouchard in homage “To the unknown heroes, with the ignored martyrs died for France” .

In 1906 a copy of the Penseur of Rodin is placed in front of the Pantheon. It was withdrawn thereafter.

In 1913, one places a republican furnace bridge in the space initially envisaged by Soufflot for the religious furnace bridge in the destination first of the building. It is François-Leon Sicard which constructs this unit, with the glory of the national Convention.

After the First World War a plate is affixed bearing the name of the writers died for France during the period 1914-1918.

The Pantheon of Paris is classified historic building in 1920.

the Fourth Republic

After the Second world war is affixed a plate bearing the name of the writers died for France for the period 1939-1945.

On both sides of the Pantheon into 1952 the new stone statues are set up of Corneille and Rousseau, to replace two statues sent to the cast iron in 1942.
The first statue of Rousseau had been inaugurated in February 1889, in opening of the celebrations of the first centenary of the French revolution.

the Fifth Republic

This period seems to mark a certain stability; no architectural element more was modified, withdrawn or added since 1958.
However a decorative piece symbolic system came to occupy the center of the nave, so far remained empty and without assignment: the reconstitution, in 1995, of the experiment of the pendulum of Foucault. Since this date, the brass ball divides the universe into two whereas around it the Egyptian goddess Bastet turns, statue installed in 1996 for the ceremony of the transfer of ashes of André Malraux.

The contemporary time expresses an obvious preoccupation of safeguarding and a conservation of the monument, all the more necessary as the obturation of the openings imagined by Soufflot modifies the ventilation of the building and increases the water content, thus causing the crumbling of the stones and the corrosion of the metal structure.

In 1984, the architect as a chief of the historic buildings, Herve Baptist, is in charge of the restoration of the bâtiment.
The finance bill for 2006 envisages the continuation of the restoration of the building.

Another event makes urgent the restoration: at the time of the storm of the Sunday, December 26, 1999, the roof of the dome undergoes major damage. The cover is strongly damaged; lead plates flew away, causing damage in the neighborhoods. The ministry for the culture, at the time, evaluates work with 5 MF for the urgency, and with 40 MF for the final restoration of the dome.

In 2007, several minor projects of restoration and installation of visit are under development:
- The setting in scene of the crypt of the Great men: A new scenography (clarified, sound environment, texts) will give a greater legibility to the place and the important tombs, in particular those of Rousseau, Voltaire, Hugo, Malraux…
- The tactile breadboarding which will be used as teaching support for the workshops for children and the visits tactile for visual defective people,
- Restoration of the model of the 18th century, classified " Historic building with the title objet" in 1975.

Guillaume Boichot low reliefs of the human rights above the door of the Pantheon.

The republican Temple, place of collective memory

Homage of the Nation

Who decides on a burial?

Beginning with the French revolution in a new building and still not devoted like church, the “pantheonisation” is a taken again tradition of the Égyptiens and which followed then the Greek then the Romains. The choice to give to a character the ultimate homage of “great man” of the French nation, as well as the setting in scene of the ceremony, varies according to the periods of the French history.

In 1791, at the time of the creation of the concept of the French Pantheon, it is the constituent Assembly which decides. The Convention in 1794 will take over for the choice of the burial of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but also to withdraw Mirabeau in 1794 and later Marat.

During the First Empire, it is of course Napoleon i which will allot this privilege.

Under the Third Republic, they are the deputies who propose and decide. Certain transfers, like that of Emile Zola in 1908, start violent polemics.

At present, this choice returns to the president of the Republic. It acts more than one irrefutable fact that of a true right, no text official not governing neither the criteria nor the form of the ceremony. One can however note that several presidents of the fifth republic (Charles de Gaulle, François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac) wanted to punctuate their time by panthéonisations, symbolic systems of their own vision of the French history.

Great men buried in the Pantheon

In 2007, one counts 76 characters of which the government with the capacity with decided the " panthéonisation".
For several, after having been allowed in the Pantheon, they were then withdrawn from it. It is about:

Mirabeau
Louis-Michel Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau
Auguste Marie Henri Barb of Dampierre
Marat

For Descartes, Bara or Viala, if the decision were made, the transfer was not carried out.

Moreover, the body of the general Beaurepaire not having been found, the ceremony did not have lieu.

Today France thus honors 65 as of his by tombs or funeral urns, located in the lower part of the monument.

It is necessary to add three tombs placed here for particular reasons:

the Soufflot architect, buried there in 1829 as an originator of the building,
Marc Schoelcher, the father of Victor, who rests with his son to respect their common will,
Sophie Berthelot, the woman of the chemist, for the same reason. Remainder, overpowered pain, Marcellin Berthelot is deceased one hour after his wife.

Date of burial:

One will find in Liste of the people quoted in the Pantheon of Paris the list people buried in the crypt classified by vault.

Inscriptions

the fatherland honors also its sons by registering their names on the walls with the republican temple. More than thousand names are registered there. One will find of them the lists in the Liste of the people quoted in the Pantheon of Paris

On both sides of the monument to the national Convention one finds:

the name of the writers died for France during the war of 1914 - 1918 (they are 546 of which Alain-Baker, Apollinaire, Charles Péguy, Victor Segalen)

See also: List of the people quoted in the Pantheon de Paris#Écrivains died during the war of 1914-1918, Homage to the writers died during the war 1914-1918

the name of the writers died for France during the war of 1939 - 1945 (They are 199 of which Saint-Exupéry, Pierre Brossolette, Robert Desnos, max Jacob)

See also: List of the people quoted in the Pantheon de Paris#Écrivains died during the war of 1939-1945, Homage to the writers died during the war 1939-1945

- On the wall of the nave some inscriptions concerning of the characters are having marked the French history with their combat and their ideas:

Henri Bergson: Philosophe with which work and the life honoured France and the human thought
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Poet, novelist, aviator, missing during a reconnaissance mission on July 31st, 1944
the aviator Guynemer: With the memory of the captain Guynemer symbol of the aspirations and enthusiasms of the army of the Nation .
General Delestraint: With the memory of the Delestraint general, chief of the secret army, companion of the Release

- In the monumental staircase which leads to the crypt, one notices a plate engraved in memory of the soldiers of the war of 1870: With the memory of the generals D' Avrelles de Paladines, Chanzy and Faidherbe, of colonels Denfert-Rochereau and Teyssier as well as officers and soldiers of the sea and Armies which in 1870-1871 saved the honor of France . The plate is surrounded by two escutcheons pointing out the delivered battles: Patay, Orleans, Belfort, Bapaume, Coulmiers, Bitche.

- In the crypt,

is hung plates of bronze on which one can read the names of the victims of the revolution of 1830. These plates were posed by Louis-Philippe at the time of a ceremony on July 29th, 1831. The names of the matyrs of the Revolution of 1848 were added thereafter. With the memory of the martyrs of the Revolution fallen in 1830 and 1848 so that Freedom lives.

See also: List of the people quoted in the Pantheon de Paris#Martyrs of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, Martyrs of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848

two inscriptions close to vault XXVI where are the coffins of Jean Jaurès, Felix Éboué, Marc Schoelcher and Victor Schoelcher:

With the memory of All Saints' day Louverture: Combatant of freedom, craftsman of the abolition of slavery, dead Haitian hero off-set at the Fort-de-Joux in 1803 .
With the memory of Louis Delgrès: Hero of the fight against the re-establishment of slavery in the Guadeloupe, died without capitulating with three hundred combatants with the Matouba in 1802, So that freedom lives.

Homage to the “Right of France”. On the plate one can read the following text: Under the cover of hatred and night fallen on France in the years of occupation, the lights, per thousands, refused to die out. Named " Right among the nations" or remained anonymous, of the women and the men, any origines and all conditions, saved Jews of persecutions anti-semites and death camps. Facing the incurred risks, they incarnated the honor of France, its values of justice, tolerance and humanity.

[More…]''

Ceremonies at the time of transfers of ashes

One can consult on the site Monum, Center of the French Monuments, the presentation of the characters admitted in the Pantheon. Starting from the ceremony of Emile Zola (1908), audio-visual documents with the format flash are proposed.

French revolution

* Mirabeau, Monday, April 4, 1791

the ceremony It dies in Paris, the April 2nd 1791. The night with the gleam of the torches, its body is carried to the Pantheon, through the Paris old man, with the formidable and unknown sounds of musical instruments imagined by François-Joseph Gossec. The building not being adapted yet to its new destination, the coffin is in fact deposited in a vault of the old abbey church. Its skin was deposited with the Holy-Genevieve church, transformed into the Pantheon by Quatremère de Quincy.

But, in November 1792, the discovery of the iron cupboard to Tileries delivered the proof of subsidies which it had touched of the Court… The September 21st 1794, its coffin had left the Pantheon by a side door, while that of Marat crossed the door of honor. In his speech, David underlined this simultaneity: “ That the defect, that imposture flee of the Pantheon. The people call there that which was mistaken never ”. The remainders of Mirabeau were never retrouvés.
Its ashes would have been thrown to the sewers.

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* Voltaire, Monday, July 11, 1791

The decision of the French revolutionists to transfer the remainders from Voltaire to the Pantheon marks for them the assertion of a filiation with the Age of Enlightenment. It is undoubtedly about a suggestion of the Of Gironde ones, which claimed readily ideas of the philosophe.
It is in any case one of the first revolutionary ceremonies. It is also the assertion of the Pantheon like laic temple; it should be remembered that with its death in 1778, Voltaire, freemason and anticlerical, had been buried almost clandestinely, the Catholic church having refused religious funeral to him. Moreover, in all logic, the clergy will not take part in the ceremony of pantheonisation.

the ceremony

Thus, thirteen years after its death (May 30th, 1778), the skin of Voltaire is transferred to the Pantheon. The night preceding the funeral convoy, the coffin is exposed in the ruins of the Bastille, prison where had held Voltaire and other enemies of the Ancien Mode, become since symbol of the Révolution.
The ceremony is put in scene by the architect Cellerier, follower of a style gréco-romain.

The funeral convoy is led by a detachment of riders, followed by the delegations of the schools, the clubs, the brotherhoods and the groups of actors of theater. Then come from the workmen having taken share to the demolition of the Bastille, carrying balls and chains found in the prison. Four men in traditional stage costume support a gilded statue of Voltaire. Actors hold up banners with the titles of its principal works. Then comes a gilded trunk, containing a complete edition of its works, recently published, in 92 volumes. An huge crowd accompanies the procession.

A complete orchestra precedes the sarcophagus drawn by twelve white horses. The walls are decorated with masks of theater, with this sentence: It fought the atheists and the fanatics. It inspired the tolerance, it claimed the human rights against the constraint of feudality. Poet, historian, philosophical, it increases the human spirit, and learned how to him to be free.

The members of the National Assembly, the magistrates and the Municipal council of Paris follow the coffin. The convoy stops with the Opéra, Old and the New Comedy, and about midnight the Pantheon reaches.

The musician François-Joseph Gossec composes for the ceremony an anthem for song and coppers (or three votes, chorus of man and orchestra of harmony) on a poem of Marie-Joseph Chénier.

The ceremony cost: 36868 pounds including 602 for the banquet offered to the national guards having formed the procession.

Painting of Pierre-Antoine Demachy

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* Louis-Michel Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, Thursday January 24th 1793
Hardly Louis XVI he has just expired, Barrère asks:
- That the body of Lepeletier is deposited in the Pantheon, that whole Convention witnesses its funeral, and that all the representatives swear a fraternal union there.
- I ask also for the honors of the Pantheon for Lepelletier, reads Robespierre, because these honors will be for the Republic more than for an individual.

the ceremony

Marie-Joseph Chénier organizes a spectacle with the antique for that which has just been assassinated by a servant of the king Louis XVI. It is with him that the worship begins from the revolutionary heroes fallen for the example. On the banner of the procession, in gold letters one can read the last words allotted to Lepeletier I die glad to pour my blood for the fatherland, I hope that it will be used to consolidate freedom and the equality and to make recognize the enemies of the people .

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* Jean-Paul Marat, September 21st, 1794
Its body initially buried with the convent of Cordeliers is then transferred to Panthéon.
The painter David is charged to organize imposing funérailles.
While the body of Marat crossed the door of honor, that of Mirabeau had left by a side door. In his speech, David underlines this simultaneity: That the defect, that imposture flee of the Pantheon. The people call there that which was never mistaken .
The following praise is marked: Like Jesus, Marat loved the people ardently and liked only him. Like Jesus, Marat hated the kings, the noble ones, the priests, the rich person, the rascals and like Jesus, it did not cease fighting these plagues of the company .
In 1795, it is regarded as traitor. February 8th, its coffin is withdrawn from the Pantheon, all the busts the representative are broken, his remainders thrown in the sewers. Its tomb is now in the cemetery of the church Saint-Etienne-of-Mount beside the Pantheon.

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* Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Saturday, October 11, 1794

The national Convention takes a decree the April 14th 1794 ordering the translation of the remainders of Rousseau in the Pantheon. Robespierre, disciple faithful of the Genevese, is given the responsability to present to Convention the decree which must sit the Revolution on a spiritual basis and offer to the country civic ceremonies where the dogmas of new morals will be celebrated, to replace the Christian festivals from now on interdites.

the ceremony

The ceremonies proceed the 18,19 and 20 vendémiaire year 3 (October 9th, 10th and 11th). A large procession gains the Tuileries where a factitious island was reproduced in a large basin. One taken care is organized all the night around the funeral urn.

See the painting of Hubert Robert: Cenotaph of J-J. Rousseau raised with the Garden of Tileries, while waiting for the translation of its ashes in the Pantheon - night from October 10th to 11th 1794 - Museum Carnavalet.

The following day a large procession leads the relics of Rousseau to the Pantheon on airs of the '' Devin of the village ''.

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First Empire

* Claude-Louis Petiet, on Tuesday, May 27, 1806
Deceased on May 25th, 1806 in its hotel, in current 8 rue Monsieur with Paris 7th, then 6 rue de Fréjus. Napoleon makes him make imposing funerals on May 27th, to which the Senate in body and the principal dignitaries of the Empire assist. After the ceremony which takes place in the Church of the Foreign missions street of the Vat, the body is transported to the Pantheon of Paris. Its funeral praise is pronounced by the mathematician Monge, President of the Senate which recalls its career lengthily. The scheduling of the ceremony is regulated by Joseph-François Baudelaire chief of the offices of the senator Clément of Laugh lender of the Senate. J.F. Baudelaire is the father of the writer Charles Baudelaire.

* Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, on Saturday, May 14, 1808
Eight days after its death, its body is transferred to the Pantheon where its praise is pronounced by Garat surrounded of the delegations of the Institute, the Senate and the Medical school.

* Jean Lannes, Friday, July 6, 1810
May 31st, 1809, Lannes, marshal of Empire, dies of the continuations of its wounds dies in the battle of Essling. In 1810, its body is transported Invalids in the Pantheon de Paris.
It was buried in the Pantheon in 1810 at the time of an imposing ceremony at the time of the first birthday of its death, but its heart was deposited in the family vault of the cemetery of Montmartre.
Constant, first servant of the Emperor, in his memories, tells this imposing ceremony. One notices in this text the destination of the various parts of the building, at the same time church and the Pantheon.

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Third Republic

* Victor Hugo, Monday the 1st er June 1885
The Pantheon is in the center of this funeral which the young Republic organizes like an event founder of the republican symbolic system. Indeed, when Victor Hugo dies on May 22nd, 1885, a committee is charged to organize funerals which the government decides national. This committee includes/understands famous names, like Renan, Charles Garnier, Auguste Vacquerie, friendly near to late, and Michelin, president of the municipal council of Paris, then dominated by the radical left. He proposes to not bury Hugo with the Father-Lachaise, but in the Pantheon. Since 1876, the republicans dreamed to restore his laic destination of it. But the project voted by the room, in 1881, had been pushed back by the Senate. Only the celebrity of the author of the Misérables will impose it brutally. Jules Grévy, president of the Republic, then decides to return to the Pantheon its statute of republican temple.

On Thursday, May 28, 1885, the church is closed with the faithful ones. The following day, in the small hour, one removes the religious symbols of the pediment. In spite of the protests of the catholics, the transformation will be this time irréversible.

the ceremony

See the details of the ceremony on the site devoted to Victor Hugo.
When, two years before its death, Hugo adds a codicil to its will: I give fifty thousand francs to the poor. I wish being carried to the cemetery in their hearse. I refuse the speech of all the churches, I request a prayer from all the hearts. I believe in a God , it cannot undoubtedly imagine at which point this declaration deist will harmonize with laic and republican philosophy government. A hearse of the poor, certainly, but exposed under the Triumphal arch, veiled of black, trônant at the top of a gigantic catafalque built by Charles Garnier, the architect of the Opera of Paris.

On this occasion fifteen speeches are marked. That inspired by the worms with Georges Fouret:

Ce cake of the Kings which has Hugo for broad bean The traditional Pantheon is a dull tomb. For me I would like better - that the Devil removes me - The gizzard of a vulture or that of a corbeau.

The coffin of Victor Hugo is in vault XXIV, joined thereafter by those of Emile Zola in 1908 and of Alexandre Dumas in 2002.

---- * Marcellin Berthelot, Monday, March 25, 1907
This scientist dies on March 18th, 1907. Its coffin will be led directly to the Pantheon like that of his wife, died the same day which had expressed the wish not to be separate of him.

Its active participation with the laicization of the State, at various positions of responsibility, is not foreign with this choice in the political context of the time.

It is also a large servant of the Republic which one honors. However Clémenceau, chief of the government on this date, famous caustic witty remarks, proposes like epitaph for this chemist, general inspector of the state education, senator, Minister for the state education then foreign affairs, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Science, elected with the French Academy in 1900, Grand Cross of the Légion of honor: Ci-to lie Marcellin Berthelot. It is the only place which he never requested.

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* Emile Zola, Thursday, June 4, 1908 : the revenge of the supporters of Dreyfus The decision of panthéoniser Emile Zola is in a disturbed political climate, in France traumatized and divided by the Affaire Dreyfus. Started with the lawsuit and the judgment of this officer in 1894, it will end, on the legal level, only in 1906 with its rehabilitation within the French Army . Meanwhile, there was the implication of Zola with in particular its famous article: “I show”, in the newspaper the Dawn , his judgment, then his suspect death in 1902.

Moreover, this period certainly one of is tightened between the French State and the representatives of the Catholic church. In their newspapers, the latter were openly in the camp anti-supporter of Dreyfus. The governments which follow one another at this beginning of century express an deliberate intention of laicization of France: the promulgation of the law of 1901 on associations (which forced the religious congregations to require an authorization to be able to be formed), that of July 7th, 1904, prohibiting purely and simply teaching with all the congreganists, finally that of December 11th, 1905, with the vote and the promulgation of the law relating to the final separation of the Churches and the State are the concrete result. A few days before the ceremony, Jean Jaurès, in the newspaper the Dispatch of April 30th, 1908, in connection with this operational startup of the separation of the Church and the State, writing: The great reform of the Separation, largest which was tried in our country since the French revolution. Moreover, France broke its diplomatic relations with the the Vatican, in 1904.

In this context, to make enter to the Pantheon, new laic temple, a writer naturalist but as engaged in the political life at the sides of Jean Jaurès constitutes an additional assertion of this distance as intends to take France with the Catholic religion. This decision gives place to many criticisms and polemics. The French Action organizes a demonstration to be opposed to this transfer.

the ceremony

The most outstanding fact is that of the attack against the major Dreyfus during the ceremony in the Pantheon. The Gregori journalist draws against him two shots which wound it with the arm. He nevertheless is discharged on September 11th of this same année.
The coffin is placed in vault XXIV, where already that of Victor Hugo was. In 2002 that of Alexandre Dumas will come to join them.

Events

The Pantheon was used as framework, on January 13rd, 1998, with the birthday of the centenary of the publication of the article “I show”. This ceremony, chaired by the Minister for Justice, Elisabeth Guigou, gave place to two speeches made by the Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin (consultable speech on Wikisource) and by the first honorary president of the court of appeal, Pierre Drai, on the topic of the role of the Court of appeal in the outcome of the business Dreyfus .

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* Leon Gambetta, Thursday November 11th 1920
One deposits on November 11th, 1920, second birthday of the armistice of the First World War, the heart of Gambetta, which rested until there at the house of Jardies (house of Gambetta, on the hill of Sevres). A speech is made, at the time of the ceremony by the president of the Republic, Alexandre Millerand.
With the top of the ballot box one can read the inscription:

Here repose

the heart of Leon Gambetta

solemnly transféree in Panthéon

on November 11th, 1920

according to the will nationale

Law of September 1st, 1920

The same day, one transports to the Triumphal arch the remainders of the Unknown soldier.

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* Jean Jaurès, Sunday, November 23, 1924
The decision of the transfer of the skin of Jean Jaurès to the Pantheon is the occasion for the government of the Cartel of the lefts which has just been elected to give an anchoring symbolic system while paying homage to that which tried to prevent the war. Herriot, Painlevé, Blum and Thomas, members of this government, had started their political career during the Affaire Dreyfus, and these supporters of Dreyfus had been strongly influenced by Jaurès. It was thus, by this gesture, to celebrate their victory in a political context which turned in their faveur.
It is Edouard Herriot who it first suggests this ceremony. The bill, presented on July 9th, is adopted by the Senate and the House of Commons on July 31st, 1924, day of the tenth birthday of the assassination of Jaurès, in spite of the opposition of part of the right-hand side, French Action and Communists. The communist deputy Jean Renaud will protest against what it will name a confiscation of its body by the Trust at the expense of the workers .
The ceremony, initially fixed at the 4 or September 22nd, dates birthdays respectively of IIIe and Ier Republics, then at November 11th, is finally decided for on Sunday, November 23, 1924, without particular symbolic system in the calendar. A debate is installed then on the style of the ceremony: Leon Blum wanted a ceremony majestic, a certain number of enthusiastic Socialists leant for a particular emphase and a theatrical side. The ceremonial is finally entrusted to Firmin Gémier, man of theater, which relies for the execution on Gustave Charpentier and Saint-Georges de Bouhelier, musiciens.
The ceremony day before the coffin arrives of Albi in the train at the Gare of Orsay, accompanied by the minors of Carmaux whose Jaurès was the elected official. It is conveyed until the Palais Bourbon, in the room Casimir Perrier, renamed Mirabeau room for the circumstance. In addition to the family and close relations, the taken care funeral one joins together the official ones: Edouard Herriot and his ministers, deputies and senators of the Trust, delegations of the CGT and the League of the human rights.

the ceremony

The official procession, preceded by the red banners of the socialist sections, is opened by delegations of organizations partisanes frays to the constitutional body. The minors of Carmaux follow then. The coffin of Jaurès, perched with the ridge of a spectacular hearse is forwarded to the Pantheon by the boulevards Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel. The newspapers speak about a crowd of 80 with: 100000 people. It is thought that more: 500000 people attended the procession. This crowd missed the Communists. It is that they wanted to pay homage to Jaurès by organizing a distinct delegation. Following the first procession, they follow the same route singing International the ; carrying red flags and signs on which one can read: “War with the war by the proletarian revolution”, “Let us institute dictatorship of the proletariat” or “To the fascistic leagues, let us oppose the proletarian centuries”, they stress slogans such as “Sharp the Soviets! ” or “dictatorship of the proletariat Lives! ”, and “With bottom middle-class Parliament! ”. The police headquarter counts: 12000 demonstrators, Humanity : 120000.
In the newspaper Humanity of the following day, evoking the heroic days of May 1871, Paul Valiant-Dressmaker written: While ravelling in front of the Pantheon, greet, with the memory of Jaurès, one of the bloodiest combat of the Commune. Middle-class of Versailles east always to the capacity. You will not drive out it that the weapons with the main.
A speech is made by Herriot in the nave of the Pantheon in the presence of: 2000 people, follow-up of the reading of a poem of Victor Hugo and, to finish, being completed on a oratorio sung by a chorus of 600 exécutants.

In order to stress well that there was not national consensus on this event, the French Action organizes the same day a homage to the one as of their, assassinated by militant an anarchist who had justified himself of his act by saying that she had wanted to avenge Jaurès. Accompanied representatives by the clergy, a crowd of leaders and militants presses themselves with the cemetery of Vaugirard to hear Leon Daudet.

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Fourth Republic

* Paul Langevin, Wednesday November 17th 1948
* Jean Perrin, Wednesday November 17th 1948
The ceremony takes place the same day for these two scientists.

Speech

For the return of the body of Jean Perrin of New York, two speeches had been marked June 17th and 18th 1948, respectively with Brest by Jean Cabannes and with the Sorbonne by Emile Borel, one and the other members of the Academy of Science.

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* Victor Schoelcher, Friday May 20th 1949

* Felix Swept, Friday May 20th 1949

Gaston Monnerville, president of the Council of the republic is at the origin of the transfer of ashes of Victor Schoelcher and Felix Eboué to Panthéon.
The mortal remains of Felix Éboué is unloaded the May 2nd 1949 in Marseilles which does him one moving reception.

the cérémonie

After one death-watch of the Triumphal arch in the presence of the president of the Republic, Vincent Auriol, and of the eminent personages of the State, the procession, to the accents of the funeral March of Chopin, assembles palate of Luxembourg towards the Pantheon between a double hedge of soldiers. Ashes of Victor Schoelcher and Felix Éboué then take place in the crypt near those of Jean Jaurès.

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* Louis Braille, Sunday June 22nd 1952 The transfer takes place at the time of the centenary of its death. The municipal coneil decides nevertheless to make take its hands which will be placed in a ballot box on its tomb with Coupvray (the Seine and Marne).

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Fifth Republic

* Jean Moulin, Saturday, December 19, 1964

the ceremony

On the initiative of the general De Gaulle and the Minister for the cultural affairs, Andre Malraux, ashes of Jean Moulin are transferred to the Pantheon in the presence of the family from late and many old resistant and personalities of which Georges Pompidou, Pierre Messmer, Jean Sainteny. One will hear, at the time ceremony to play it the song of the Partisans .
On this occasion Malraux pronounces, of a voice of tragic actor, a speech remained famous: … As Leclerc entered to the Invalids, with his procession of exaltation in the sun of Africa and the combat of Alsace, enters here, Jean Moulin, with your terrible procession. With those which died in the cellars without to have spoken, like you; and even, which is perhaps more atrocious, while having spoken; with all striped and all mowed concentration camps, with the last stumbling body of the dreadful files of Night and Fog, finally fallen under the sticks; with the eight thousand Frenchwomen who did not return from the bagnes, with the last died woman with Ravensbrück to have given asylum to the one as of ours. Enter, with the people born of the shade and missing with it - our brothers in the order of the Night… Commemorating the birthday of the Release of Paris, I said: “Listening this evening, youth of my country, these bells of birthday which will sound as those of fourteen years ago. Can you, this time, to hear them: they will sound for you… . ----

* Rene Cassin, Monday, October 5, 1987
The transfer of ashes of Rene Cassin is the first of the four panthéonisations to have taken place under the presidency of François Mitterrand. That which one honors this day is a lawyer, Nobel Prize of peace in 1968. One him must have made adopt the Universal declaration of the human rights.

the ceremony

Speech of François Mitterrand: He is famous men to have incarnated the pain or the one time glory. He is the different one whose size is to have known to pre-empt their time, by sowing the germs of the future there. Rene Cassin is those là. He will evoke then the right of interference: This need for humanitarian aid crosses like the images the borders of the ideology, the language, the censure and often of official sovereignties. Because it is that of each man, the suffering concerns the universal one. The right of the victims to be helped, since they call the Help!, and helped by volunteers which wants to be professionally neutral, in what one called, there is little, the “duty of humane interference” in the situations of extreme urgency, all that do not doubt it will appear one day in the Universal declaration of the human rights. As well it is true as no State can be held for the owner of the sufferings that it generates or that it abrite. ----

* Jean Monnet, Wednesday, November 9, 1988
Speech of François Mitterrand:
“Very exactly hundred years ago, on November 9th, 1888, Jean Monnet was born in Cognac, in Charente, and its life which was long and fertile tells how small provincial of Saintonge became the first citizen of Europe… ”

---- * the abbot Gregoire

* Gaspard Monge

* Condorcet, Tuesday, December 12, 1989

the cérémonie'

The ceremony of transfer of ashes of these three personalities takes place at the time of the festivals of the bicentenary of the French revolution, in the presence of François Mitterrand, president of the French Republic.
In the beginning, the speech was to be marked by François Mitterrand; it was it by Jack Lang.
Extracts of the speech: Revolutionists in your time were it to you. Revolutionists in our time remain it to you… Then Hello and Fraternity. Welcome on your premise in the temple of the Republic, the phantom Parliament of the free men, equal and fraternels.
During the transfer of ashes of the Abbot Gregoire, Jacques Gaillot, bishop, were the only one representing French Catholic church. It should be said that the relations of the Gregoire abbot with the catholic hierarchy were always difficult because of its implication in the civil life. The day of his death, the archbishop of Paris - Monseigneur de Quelen - opposed so that it received the last sacraments; it required of Gregoire his renunciation of the oath of the civil Constitution of the clergy. The old bishop refused any Net. The abbot Guillon, in spite of the orders of his hierarchy, agreed to reach without condition the desires of dying. The Roman authority closed the church with its skin, but gathered around Fayette, two thousand people accompanied the body by the bishop gallican to the Montparnasse cemetery.
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* Marie and Pierre Curie, Thursday April 20th 1995

the ceremony

Extracts of the article of the newspaper Humanity : It is eighteen hours. The doors of the Pantheon, with the columns equipped with an immense tricolor cloth, open on the coffins of Pierre and Marie Curie. Moving and solemn moments. In silence, the choruses of the army entonnent the first measurements of freedom rises , final of the universal Temple of Berlioz. With small steps, the republican guards deposit two beers in the center of imposing entered. For the first time in the history, a woman is allowed, for her own merits and at the sides of her husband, in the sanctuary of large the hommes.
One minute of silence. Then François Mitterrand, accompanied by Lech Wałęsa, of Edouard Balladur, Eve Curia, girl of the two researchers, as well as their descendants, are delayed around the window where the Nobel Prize and the notebooks of the couple are exposed.

The ceremony is completed. It will have lasted a little more than one hour. Exhumed small cemetery of Seals, the two coffins go up initially slowly the Rue Soufflot, carried by students of Paris-VI, future enquiring scientific. At the slow rate/rhythm of the Continuation in major D n° 3 of Jean-Sebastien Bach, they reaches the esplanade of the Pantheon. On both sides, two hundred pupils of the college Marie-Curie of Seals and the college of sciences and technology of Versailles hold in their arms the symbols of the atoms: a reference to the universal language of science.

The sky is gray and crowd very few. Essentially, pupils and students, come from whole France. Homage of youth to couples, exténué but happy, which changed the face of the world , as will point out it later a few moments Pierre-Gilles of Genoa in his short speech. In the name of the scientific community, the Nobel Prize of physique 1993 stresses the importance of work of the Curie. Those of Pierre and Marie, initially, who allowed “the painful birth of a new science: nuclear physics”. Those their descendants, then, on the radioactivity artificielle.
À its continuation, Lech Wałęsa underlines the Polish origins of Marie Curie, born in Warsaw in 1867.
To close the speeches, François Mitterrand greets lengthily, in the name of the Nation , memory of the couple and its “satisfying”, base, in its eyes “of any scientific ethics”.

Caroline Casadesus advances. Like ultimate point of organ to this moving ceremony, she interprets the Good-bye Serrero Marijuana. Ashes of Pierre and Marie Curie can finally rest in the Pantheon…

the speeches

François Mitterrand

Pierre-Gilles of Genoa

Lech Wałęsa

Speaking before the Head of the State, Pierre-Gilles of Genoa, Nobel Prize of physics 1993, paid to the two scientists the homage of the scientific community. In a short speech, the physicist initially greeted “all this made work with naked hand in a galetas, this painful work which constituted the birth of a new science that others will call the nuclear physics”. He restored the importance of work of Pierre and Marie Curie in the century. “The thirty years follow their discoveries will see an explosion of knowledge to which will contribute their daughter Irene and his/her husband Frederic Joliot”.

to note : By fear of radiations, the coffin of Marie was leaded.

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* Andre Malraux, Saturday November 23rd 1996
Malraux is the fifth writer to enter to the Pantheon. The ceremony takes place twenty years, day for day, after its death.,

the speeches

Jacques Chirac, lately elected president of the Republic, takes an important place in the homages paid to the man of letters and the gaullist who was Malraux.

Extracts from an interview of Jacques Chirac:

Why Malraux in the Pantheon? Who had the idea of it?
It is Pierre Messmer which proposed it to me, within the framework of the celebration of the 20th birthday of died of Andre Malraux. This idea appeared immediately obvious to me. For all that was André Malraux, the combatant of freedom, impassioned justice, the discoverer of art, the writer, the companion more than faithful of the General, the inventor of the ministry for the Culture. But also, because it made dream several generations, through plume. For itself and France.

the ceremony

Three ceremonies proceed successively: the first with the Invalids, the second with UNESCO and the last in the Pantheon.

On the place of the Pantheon: The ceremony, put in scene by the painter and decorator Jean-Paul Chambas, will start around 7 p.m. It will be opened, street Soufflot, by the procession of a hundred young people provided with hurricane lamps, symbols of the clandestine tracks of landing, evoking Malraux combatant. On bottom of musical works, in particular of Messiaen, a play of lights and projections will illuminate the pediment of the Pantheon… Inside: The coffin is placed in the middle of the nave with, at its sides, a sculpture of Giacometti the Man who walks .

Speech of Jacques Chirac

speech of Maurice Schumann

----
* Alexandre Dumas, Saturday, November 30, 2002
The decision of the transfer of ashes is made in March 2002, by order in Council, with a comment of Jacques Chirac: With this gesture, the Republic will give all its place to the one of his/her most turbulent children and most talented, of which all the life was with the service of our ideal républicain.

the ceremony

Coming from Villers-Cotterêts where Dumas was buried, the procession made a first halt in its castle Assembles-Cristo It where one taken care is carried out, then another stop to the Senate and finally, in evening, accompanied by an escort by musketeers carrying the coffin covered with a blue cloth of France on which is written celebrates it currency All for One, for All , the procession advances towards the Pantheon where awaits the president of the Republic and various personalities.

On the small scene of a carriage, the theater of Alexandre , drawn by mules and preceded by a regiment by drums, young actors reconstituted passages of the parts of Dumas in front of a hundred people of the street in costumes of time.

When it reaches the square of the Pantheon, a Marianne mongrel rise on a white horse comes to the front from the coffin. The famous letter of Victor Hugo with Dumas-wire is then read: The name of Alexandre Dumas is more than French, it is European; it is more than European, it is universel.. Alain Decaux, of the French Academy, then the president of the Republic, Jacques Chirac, make a speech.

Then the coffin of Alexandre Dumas is descended in vault XXIV where already those of Victor Hugo and Emile Zola are.

the details of the ceremony can be consulted on Internet site devoted to Alexandre Dumas Dumas in the Pantheon

Attempts at transfer

Several attempts were not carried out or failed (refusal of the widow or the family, contrary testamentary provisions, various oppositions, lack of interest of the political circles).

Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) philosopher. He is honoured by the national Convention which, in 1792, projected to transfer its ashes to the Pantheon with the honors due to the great men. Two centuries later, its remainders are always in an abbey vault of the church Saint-Germain-of-Meadows, in Paris. The execution of the decree of the Convention of the October 17th 1793 was still not applied and the decree of February 1795 fixing one ten years period after its death so that a person is introduced like " candidat" is thus largely past.

Nicolas-Joseph Beaurepaire (1740-1792), general being committed suicide or having been killed because of its refusal of the rendering of the town of Verdun. Its body having disappeared, the transfer was never carried out.

Joseph Bara and Viala, proposal of Robespierre. The 8 nivose year II, the national Convention returns a decree in this direction, but the transfers never took place.

In 1902, Mr. Couyba, deputy, makes a proposal for a relative law to the transfer of ashes of Michelet, of Quinet, Renan and Balzac in the Pantheon.

In January 1945, the Communists require the transfer of the writer Romain Roland in the name of his engagement against Fascism, but the family opposes it.

the gaullists propose Charles Péguy. The family refuses.

the popular Republican movement (MRP) proposes Henri Bergson to represent the Jews and the other victims of the Régime of Vichy (an inscription with its name was inaugurated in 1967).

Alfred Dreyfus, at the time of the national ceremony of the centenary of its rehabilitation on July 12th, 1906. The project is defended as one second rehabilitation by many personalities among which appear Jack Lang and the former minister Olivier Stirn, great-grand-nephew of Alfred Dreyfus, as well as the Minister for Justice, Pascal Clément. But on July 5th, 2006, Jacques Chirac announces that the project was not adopted. On this occasion, old the Robert Badinter, Minister of Justice declares: Dreyfus is a victim, certainly of an exceptional courage, but a victim, and the characteristic of the hero is to have courage to choose its destiny. The hero of the business Dreyfus, it is Zola and it is in Panthéon.

Opening-debates

Which will be next the great man ?

Traditionally the decision of pantheonisation - the panthéonade according to the neologism that Régis Debray forged by derision - is made by Presidential decree of the Republic, on a proposal from the Prime Minister and report/ratio of the Minister for the culture and the communication.
Two conditions must initially be joined together: That impétrant it is French (or naturalized) and that part of its remainders are “available”.
Then, the criteria are more delicate to define: of course, it is initially a question of paying homage to an exceptional man whose work and life marked the History and can be used as example. The pantheonisation is also an occasion, to be able it in place, to emphasize one period of the History and to engrave its print there.

Names circulate in the opinion, here are below some examples:

Pierre Mendès France

The Institute Pierre Mendès France seeks to sensitize the opinion with the transfer of ashes of the statesman to the Pantheon. Since 1982 and the national funeral of the intellectual guide of part of the French left, some evoked its pantheonisation. But the tradition imposes dialog and time for consideration. It is thus only into 1998 that the widow of the former thinker of the decolonization, Marie-Claire Mendès France, asked and obtained for a discussion with Jacques Chirac. Without answer of the president of the Republic, which consults, the Institute Pierre Mendès France launched a petition in the press: several thousands of signatures of which those of 270 members of Parliament of the Parliament and the Senate were collected by the honorary vice-president of the Senate, Michel Dreyfus-Schmidt.

Charles Michel of the Sword

Several associations by way of petition require the entry of the abbot of the Sword of the Pantheon. If it did not develop, for the deaf people, the equivalent of what Louis Braille invented for the blind men, it is certain that it exerted a great influence on the semantic structuring of this gestural language which is the language of the deaf persons, while arranging itself so that there is a strong equivalence between meant of French written and the meant gestural ones. Moreover, it conceived a vast project of education of mass of defective the auditifs.
Would the fact that he was priest be a brake? It is in fact that the entry of the Abbé Gregoire for the celebrations of the bicentenary of the French revolution had moved the Catholic church by France. The pantheonisation constitutes to some extent the laic equivalent of canonization and thus made competition.

Hector Berlioz

Jacques Barzun wrote, one half-century ago: If there exists an negative image to differently honor the memory with Berlioz than by playing its music, it is in Paris a vast monument on the pediment of which one reads the inscription With the great men, the grateful fatherland. Transfer to the Pantheon the remainders from Berlioz so that it there takes seat among its pairs. the idea had been presented in 1968 to president De Gaulle by André Malraux on the suggestion of the deputy Jean Boyer (creative and chair current Berlioz festival with the Saint-Andrew Coast), and the President had accepted it. But the resignation of De Gaulle in 1969 put an end to this project for many years. In 2000 in preparation for the bicentenary in 2003 the project was started again, and President Chirac gave his agreement to it. The wish of Jacques Barzun thus seemed in way to be carried out: the remainders of Berlioz were to be transferred to the Pantheon on June 21st, 2003, and the Orchestra of Paris was going to play on this occasion the funeral and triumphal Symphony in the streets of Paris. But this project was deferred now sine die. hberlioz.com

on March 18th, 1998, the Friends of the Commune symbolically made enter to the Pantheon a whole line of Communardes and Communards. Why Jules Vallès, writer and Communard, it would not be received there now?

In 2006, at the time of the decision of the Head of the State to celebrate on May 10th the Abolition of slavery, Georges Sarre, the first secretary of the MRC, reiterates his request for transfer of All Saints' day Louverture to the Pantheon. Slave black, François Dominique All Saints' day, known as All Saints' day Louverture, was one of the chiefs of the revolt of the slaves in 1791 in Haiti.

was also quoted: Claude Monet, painter; the marquis of Fayette; the naturalist Buffon; the Abbot Pierre…

Women in the Pantheon

The inscription: With large the men , the grateful Fatherland was taken up to now literally. Only two women remain there; the first allowed one, by chronological order, was Sophie Berthelot, not with personal capacity but not to separate it from her husband, the chemist Marcellin Berthelot; the second, Marie Curie, twice Nobel Prize.

Often quoted women

Olympe de Gouges, feminist before the word does not exist, was guillotinée on November 3rd 1793. It had written in 1791 the Déclaration of the women's rights and of the citizen, with this precisely famous sentence: The woman has the right to go up on the scaffold; she must have also that to go up in Tribune. Several organizations feminist ask that she be buried in the Pantheon. After a first campaign in 1989, at the time of the bicentenary of the Revolution, the historian Catherine Marand-Fouquet launched a new action in this direction.

George Sand “Her work largely deserves to continue to live, and the Pantheon is the guarantee of an eternal life” estimates Christiane Smeet-Sand, her downward. Far from the stereotypes of regionalistic writer, even “pastoral”, “Sand is the first female character of his time and of its condition to have asserted its freedom of woman by her work”, judges Mr. Georges Buisson, administrator of the House-museum of Nohant (Indre), recalling that the author of the Pond to the Devil and Small Fadette is also the creative one of two republican newspapers. Among the personalities favorable to this ideas, the sides of its president of honor, Claudia Cardinale: one finds Juliette Binoche, which incarnated George Sand with the cinema, Elisabeth Badinter, Benoîte Groult, Régine Deforges, Lambert Wilson or Jean-Claude Brialy. A project was filed in 1998 by Elisabeth Badinter and Simone Veil. September 29th, 2003 Christiane Smeet-Sand met an adviser of Jacques Chirac on this subject and a petition gave to him.

Lucie Aubrac (1912-2007). Its funeral gave place to a homage of the Nation, accompanied by the military honors. In his funeral message the president of the Republic, Jacques Chirac recalled in this connection that certain beings of exception carry to highest the values of the humanité. Incarnation of courage, emblematic figure of resistance to all form of oppression. It was of all the engagements: against the German occupant and the ideology Nazi; for the truth, social justice, recognition of the women's rights, her fight at the most stripped sides of and oppressed.

Lili Boulanger is sometimes quoted also to represent the world of arts.

Current events in favor of the burial of women in the Pantheon

From March 7th to 17th 2002, an exposure on the frontage of the Pantheon was the occasion to recall how much certain eminent women have, by their life with the service of science, arts, philosophy, the policy or by their engagement, deserved to belong to our laic and republican Pantheon.

From March 8th to May 12th 2002, the exposure D as discoverers was held in the Pantheon, at the time of day of the woman. Details of the ceremony on the site of the Ministry for research.

The exposure, in five parts approached the following topics:
♦ Presentation of emblematic discoverers: Hildegarde de Bingen, Sophie Germain, Grace Hopper, Marie Curie, Rita Levi-Montalcini… and in the form of a provocation, invitation with the controversy, “they create children, but not ideas! ” illustrated by old documents, posters and stereotypes machistes.
♦ the second part the question “does the brain raises have a sex? ”, with an approach as well neurobiologic as sociologique.
♦ the third part tackles the subject of the creativity, at all the levels, which they are practical inventions or important discoveries. The goal is not to concentrate on the elite, but to offer examples to which the young people can be identified: one presents the activity to it to the daily newspaper of women working with tasks of research and contributing to advanced connaissances.
♦ the fourth part draws up an assessment, as well on the course of the girls as on discrimination, and invites to the debate “do they Make a different science? ”
♦ the last part is resolutely turned towards the topicality of the scientific policy to Europe, the dies and the trades.

October 21st, 2002: Marie-Jo Zimmermann, appointed the Moselle draws the attention of the minister delegated to the parity and the professional equality on the fact that the Government was committed promoting an active policy as regards equal rights between the men and the women. In connection with the presence of women in the Pantheon, she will say: This obvious imbalance (the proportion man-women in the Pantheon, note) is of as much less acceptable than certain women marked the history of the country by their strong personality. Several of them have in particular eminent titles which would at least deserve to be examined in a logic of entry in the Pantheon. It is acted as priority of Olympe de Gouges which was one of the first feminists. Taking part in the Revolution and proposing the emancipation of the women by a Declaration of the women's rights and of the citizen (1791), it was guillotinée in 1793. In same logic, one can quote the mathematician Sophie Germain, Louise Michel, legendary figure of the Labor movement and Commune of Paris and Simone Weil, large philosopher of first half of the 20th century.

It should be noted that the informative escutcheon on the Pantheon planted on the pavement surrounding the building was still not modified since the pantheonisation of Marie Curie in spite of the intervention of the senator Yann Gaillard at the time of the meeting to the Senate of October 10th, 2006.

The Pantheon and History

For more than 200 years, the Pantheon has been pilot many scenes of the French history, even it was sometimes an actor. By its situation in the Latin Quarter, it is with the first cabins as soon as some demonstrators decide to transform a dissatisfaction into revolution. One calls also upon his “spirit” to commemorate an event, or when one estimates the integrity of France in danger.

The Pantheon and science

The Pendule of Foucault is associated with the history of the Pantheon of Paris. When, in 1851, the physicist Jean Bernard Leon Foucault seeks a high building to show the rotation of the Ground, the Pantheon, civil place, seem very indicated. 1902 will mark another stage, at the same time scientific and policy of an assertion of the released scientific spirit of any religious influence. Since 1995, the pendulum beats again in the nave.

By its situation in height in Paris, the Pantheon will be used as receiver with the experiments on the T.S.F of Eugene Ducretet.

The Pantheon and art

Its dominant position in top of the Holy-Genevieve hill as her original form knew, as of its construction, to attract the eye of artists experienced like Van Gogh, Marc Chagall or that of the amateurs. Republican symbol, it will be put in poem by Victor Hugo, it is also the subject of several books.

It is now also place of exposure where contemporary artists like Gerard Garouste or Ernesto Neto benefit from the vast space of the nave to hang their works there.

Anecdotes and legends

Why a Christian cross surmount does the building, in a laic republic?

The current cross which surmounts the Pantheon has a long story:
In 1790, during the completion of the dome by Jean-Baptiste Rondelet, architect charged to finish the monument after the disappearance of Jacques-Germain Soufflot, a provisional cross is placed at the top of the dome while waiting for the statue of Genevieve who must surmount the building.

In 1791, the constituent Assembly decides to transform the Holy-Genevieve church into mausoleum to accommodate ashes of Mirabeau. The architect Quatremère de Quincy thus makes replace the cross by the Fame , a nine meters height statue of Claude Dejoux, representing a woman embouchant a trumpet.

The February 20th 1806, Napoleon returns the building to its destination first, but leaves the statue to the top of the dome.

The January 3rd 1822, the church is finally inaugurated. One places at the top a gilded bronze cross.

The August 26th 1830, Louis Philippe retransforme the building in the Pantheon. One removes the cross and one replaces it by a flag.

The December 6th 1851, by a decree of the prince chair Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the Pantheon is returned to the catholic worship and one replaces a cross gilded on the dome.

The April 2nd 1871, the Communards saw the small branches of the cross and place at the top a flag rouge.
The guns of the place of the Pantheon greeted the flag which came to replace the cross by which imperial Catholicism had marked its taking possession of the édifice.
The Commune took again with the clergy what the clergy had usurped. The flag was red. We are not those which the red effarouche.
It is not a new color for us. During all the exile, the red flag was the flag of the proscribed Republic; and we find very simple that the Republic returns to France with its flag.
The Tricolor, which was that of the first Republic, had, certainly, its glorious days; but the empire trailed it in the mud of Sedan, and it is not us who will collect it there. (Auguste Vacquerie, the Recall, March 29th, 1871)

In July 1873, a cross out of stone is given, high 4 meters and weighing 1500 kg with its base and its ball. For the transfer of ashes of Victor Hugo, the 3rd republic gives again at the building the statute of the Pantheon but she did not considered to be necessary to remove the cross.

Later, in the doubt that the protection of the cross is not sufficient, one surmounts it by a lightning conductor.

Anecdotes

to trace the vertical spindles containing the boxes of the dome, Rondelet made use of a simple method. Hanging a plumbline at the top, it made use of the shadow directly on the vault already carried out to materialize them.

Little story of painting decorating the dome of the cupola.

This painting is ordered by Napoleon with the Gros painter in 1811. But the reversals of the History will decide some differently. Here what one can read in the " New general biography, of the times most moved back until our jours" , appeared in 1858:
Napoleon charged it (Large, note) with carrying out on the interior surface of the dome of the Pantheon, in proportions of four meters, Clovis , Charlemagne , holy Louis , and itself, the founder of the new dynasty. Large was to finish the whole in two years, for the sum of: 36000 francs, when the disastrous retirement of Russia occurred, then the countryside of France, finally the return of the Bourbons: the cupola undergoes the consequences of these events. August 10th 11814, the Minister for the house of the king made write in Gros to place Louis XVIII in the place of Napoleon , and one carried to: 50000 francs, the sum of: 36000 francs originally allocated. March 31st, 1815, new ministerial letter enjoignant with the artist to represent Napoleon as it had begun; the price of: 50000 francs was maintained. Finally on May 16th of the same Anne, after the Hundred Days, a third counter-order obliged it to again place Louis XVIII in the place of Napoleon emperor.

In the memories of the general Soult one can read the following anecdote:

bivouac… the soldiers dispersed in the surroundings to go to unearth potatoes. A field was collected soon, and the meal was prepared soon with the fire of the bivouac. Silence lasted as much as this important occupation lasted; but it did not last a long time and the provisions were exhausted before the hunger was not alleviated. The inexhaustible cheerfulness of the French soldier returned then. Doubting nothing, speaking about all, launching original projections and often even instructive, such is the French soldier. One evening, one spoke political and about the news of Paris; the matter had fallen on the great men who one had made enter to the Pantheon or whom one had successively made some leave, according to the spirit of the day and the influence of the party régnant.
- Which one will put today, asked somebody?
- Parbleu, answered its neighbor, an apple of terre.
and everyone to applaud this projection, which had more range than the intention of its author had not probably wanted to give him.

One quotes this sentence of Louis XVIII with which one proposed to withdraw Voltaire of the Pantheon, returned to the catholic worship under its reign: Leave it, it is punished well enough to have to hear the mass the every day.

Legends

The buildings give sometimes place to the creation of legends, like that of the phantom of the Opéra.

For the Pantheon, one tells that, threatened by moisture of the ground, the building would have been saved by the ingeniousness of an architect who would have had the idea to raise the building to inject below molten lead. Its method? It would have practiced with regular intervals of the holes of the diameter of a bar with mine all around the base of the building, stuffs these sawdust holes and copiously sprinkles the whole. Wet wood, while inflating, would then have raised the building of a few millimetres, sufficiently to run lead in fusion there. While drying, the sawdust would then have redeposited the Pantheon carefully on its basis.

References

See also: related Amorce=Article, Hotel of the Invalids

See it video on the site of the INA.
Voyage in Ermenonville or letter on the translation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the Pantheon (1794)
Two million people assists with the funeral
the transfer of ashes of Jaurès to the Pantheon, according to Paul Nizan
Discours of Jean Cabannes, member of the Academy of Science, Discours June 17th, 1948 of Emile Borel, member of the Academy of Science, June 18th, 1948
Internet site of the Senate, 1949, Victor Schoelcher: a senator philanthropist
See it video on the site of I.N.A. Speech of Andre Malraux audio Extracted the speech of Malraux on the site of the INA
Speech made by the president of the Republic, for the transfer of ashes of Rene Cassin to the Pantheon, 1987
Speech made by the president of the Republic, for the transfer of ashes of Jean Monnet to the Pantheon, 1988
edition of April 21st, 1995
Speech made by the president of the Republic for the transfer of ashes of Pierre and Marie Curie to the Pantheon, 1995
'' Humanity '', edition of April 21st, 1995: '' A couple which changed the face of the world ''
More on the setting into scene of the ceremony: the painter and decorator Jean-Paul Chambas. To consult the details of the ceremony: external bond Humanity '' In André Malraux, the grateful fatherland ''
Speech made by the president of the Republic during the transfer of ashes of Andre Malraux to the Pantheon, 1996
More on the setting in scene of Ivan Morane ceremony, the speeches: Speech of Alain Decaux, the French Academy; Speech of Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic; In the press Article of the newspaper Humanity '' Alexandre Dumas. Two hundred years after '' Auteur: Alain Nicolas, November 30th, 2002.
1902 - 2002: Victor Hugo, of the centenary at the bicentenary
Text of the speech on the site of the Association of the members of the academic palms: AMOPA
To read the whole speech and the answer of Nicole Asseline, deputy secretary with the parity and the professional equality
Report/ratio submitted with the Directory on work of the Pantheon (1792)
Short speech of the president of the Republic, at the time of the national ceremony in the honor of Right of France, 2007
Speeches made at the time of the funeral of Victor Hugo the 1 {{er}} June 1885

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