Pantheon was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve. it is an early example of neoclassicism, with a façade modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, surmounted by a dome that owes some of its character to Bramante's tempietto. King Louis XV vowed in 1744 that if he recovered from his illness he would replace the ruined church of the abbey of St. Genevieve with an edifice worthy of the patron saint of Paris.
The abbey of St. Genevieve was finally completed in 1790, coinciding with the early stages of the French Revolution. National constituent assembly, whose president had been Mirabeau, ordered that the building be changed from a church to a mausoleum for the burial of great Frenchmen. Among those buried in its necropolis are Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Jean Moulin, Marie Curie, Louis Braille, and Soufflot, its architect. Square itself, is not more than a traffic circle, without any other content.
Wide open space is providing vistas across the Paris all the way to Eifel tower but without place where you can actually sit and enjoy it. Other way around looking towards the Saint-Etienne-du-Mont church [photo bellow left] inviting sights are catching your imagination and guiding you to the Latin quarter and its narrow streets with typical Paris atmosphere. Both illustration from 1852 and photo bellow right are taken from that area, from almost exact spot. Architecture is unchanged 160 years later.
Previous Square Capitan and Arènes de Lutèce, Paris
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