The Pantheon ... the Temple of the Nation...

SSD_8716Originally built as a church, the Pantheon is now a mausoleum containing the remains of France's distinguished citizens. Napoleon deemed the crypt of the Pantheon of this former basilica to be the final resting place of the great servants of the state. AmongSSD_8738 those buried here are Voltaire (famous for his advocacy of civil liberties including freedom of religion and the separation of church and state); Victor Hugo (French poet and writer of Les Miserables); Marie Sklodowska-Curie (the first woman to winSSD_8751 a Nobel prize for her pioneering research in radioactivity) and Louise Braille (the inventor of the Braille system of reading and writing). More recently, in 2002, guards carried in the coffin of Alexandre Dumas, author of the Three Musketeers, draped in cloth inscribed "One for all, all for one".

Another fascinating aspect of the Pantheon is that it house's Foucault's SSD_8722pendulum. First placed here to demonstrate the earth's rotation, the device was designed as an experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. While it was well known that the Earth rotated, the introduction of the Foucault pendulum in 1851 was the first proof of the rotation in an easy to see experiment. The pendulum is directly underneath the grand central dome of the Pantheon.

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