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Pantheon Paris The Pantheon is a must-see for anyone with an interest in French history, literature or science. The building was originally meant to be the "Eglise Sainte-Genevieve" (Church of Saint Genevieve), but by the time it was finished in 1789 the French Revolution was underway. The new government decided that it would instead serve as a secular mausoleum for the honor and burial of great Frenchmen. Although the building has been used as a church since then, today it is again a secular temple to the great minds of France. The Pantheon is the burial place of many famous French thinkers and writers. The list of those interred there includes luminaries such as Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Louis Braille, Pierre and Marie Curie, and Alexandre Dumas. The Pantheon is also the site of another important part of France's cultural history: Foucault's Pendulum. In 1851, astronomer Jean Bernard Leon Foucault first demonstrated his visual proof of the earth's rotation by hanging a massive pendulum from the ceiling of the building. Similar pendulums exist today all over the world. The Pantheon is located in the Latin Quarter of Paris, near the Sorbonne and the Luxembourg Gardens. It is open everyday from 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Adult admission is 7.50 euros. 
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