Panthéon

Lonely Planet review

The Panthéon is a superb example of 18th-century neoclassicism but its ornate marble interior is gloomy in the extreme. The 80-odd permanent residents of the crypt include Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Louis Braille, Victor Hugo, and Émile Zola. Personages removed for reburial elsewhere after a re-evaluation of their greatness include Mirabeau and Marat.

The domed landmark was commissioned by Louis XV around 1750 as an abbey church dedicated to Ste-Geneviève in thanksgiving for his recovery from an illness, but because of financial and structural problems it wasn't completed until 1789 - not an especially good year for church openings in Paris. Instead of knocking it down, the Constituent Assembly converted it into a secular mausoleum for the grands hommes de l'époque de la liberté française (great men of the era of French liberty) two years later, and bricked up most of the windows.

The first woman to be interred in the Panthéon in recognition of her own achievements was the two-time Nobel Prize-winner Marie Curie (1867-1934), who was reburied here (along with her husband Pierre) in 1995.