The Panthéon

Commissioned by Louis XV, the former Church of Sainte-Geneviève saw the Marquis de Marigny commission Jacques-Germain Soufflot to design it in 1755; Soufflot died in 1780 without seeing the completion of his magnum opus, nor its transformation, barely a year later, into a national pantheon. Whilst Sainte-Geneviève was to revitalise a style still influenced by the model of Counter-Reformation churches, its transformation into a secular temple saw it join a different category: that of public commemorative monuments.

The National Pantheon is one of the highlights of the Parisian skyline. The projection of its dome, which today symbolises the nation’s recognition of its great men, was originally intended to recall the monarchy’s attachment to the Church.

When Louis XV decided to build a monumental church to house the relics of Saint Geneviève, he imposed this symbol of loyalty on the neighbourhood of the Church of Saint-Médard, whose Jansenist influence was characterised by very active opposition to the monarchy. In this sense, the church’s vertical grandeur serves as a reminder of the principle of royal absolutism. Soufflot, for his part, sought to embellish this area through a grand architectural composition, in a Paris still deeply marked by its medieval layout.

He therefore designed a complex comprising a new avenue rising from the Hôtel du Luxembourg and leading to a semi-circular square. At its centre, the church and its main façade stand alone, a novelty for the time. The church itself features a novel architectural composition, consisting of two ‘classical-style’ temples stacked one atop the other. The lower one has a portico and pediment, surmounted by a second in the form of a monopteros temple.

This urban ensemble offers two different perspectives. From below, one sees only the portico surmounted by the dome, a feature destined to become a Neoclassical archetype. But upon reaching the top, the building and its dome disappear behind the monumental portico with its pediment. The passer-by then becomes aware of the immediate surroundings, with, opposite the church, two blocks of buildings aligned with the curved outline of the upper square. Each, designed by Soufflot, features an Ionic portico, respecting the pre-eminence of the church and its Corinthian order.

Whilst this new square isolates the main façade from the surrounding buildings, the rest of the church is still connected to the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève. This situation was to change when, having been commissioned to transform the royal church into a secular temple, Quatremère de Quincy envisaged the complete separation of the monument. The plan was implemented by the imperial administration in 1807 with a rectangular space designed to complement Soufflot’s semi-circular square. In 1833, the need arose to protect the monument’s solemnity from the city’s ever-increasing crowds, leading to the creation of the enclosed plinth designed by L. N. Destouches.

Passing through the portico’s peristyle, one enters the interior space of the nave and realises the layout is centred on a Greek cross. Drawn by the light from above, one proceeds towards the crossing. As one’s gaze is drawn upwards, one discovers the arrangement of three domes. The first two, set within their frames, showcase Antoine-Jean Gros’s fresco of the heavens, the central decorative feature of the lantern tower. The third dome is not timber-framed, as in Mansard’s model at Les Invalides, but constructed from stone coffers.

Turning back towards the naves, one is struck by the richness of their articulation, which contrasts with the simplicity of the barrel vaults of the classical tradition: here, the central domes rest on pendentives, which are supported by lunette vaults. The system is subtly inspired by Gothic principles, with its buttresses and supports that are not linear but rather point-supported.

The entire roof structure is supported by an interior colonnade that ensures continuity of space and light, and which stands in stark contrast to the spatial rigidity of Counter-Reformation churches. By blocking the large original side windows, Quatremère retained only the light coming through the tall, large lunettes. Having been converted into a mausoleum, the interior was stripped of its decorative elements. Darker and more austere, it gains in solemnity what it loses in splendour and luminosity.

What remains is the spatial and structural richness, made possible by a construction system whose scientific approach owes much to Jean Rondelet, Soufflot’s assistant, who would complete the work upon Soufflot’s death. Thus, the selection of stones was standardised using a machine to test their strength, and metal reinforcements were designed which, in this case, reached a level of density and sophistication never before seen.

The monument thus embodies the culmination of^18th-century thinking on church typology, namely the centred plan, references to antiquity, and the attempt to develop new models such as the drum-and-dome structure. But one can also discern in it the scientific and rational spirit of the Encyclopédistes. All this forms the seeds of a neoclassical architecture yet to come, and marks the end of the Mannerist style of the Rococo period in the first third of the^18th century.

Having become a secular temple, the former church gave rise to a new urban feature: the public monument. Seated atop its summit, solemnly liberated from the constraints of the city lying below, it continues to impose, even today, the majesty of its republican ideal upon the city.

Fabienne Cirio, ‘The Panthéon: Symbol of the Revolutions. From the Church of the Nation to the Temple of Great Men’, Exhibition Catalogue. In: *Bulletin Monumental*, vol. 148, no. 3, 1990.

Montagne Sainte-Geneviève: 2,000 Years of Art and History, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée Carnavalet, 1981.

Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Jacques-Germain Soufflot, Paris, Éditions du patrimoine, Paris, 2004.