Louis XV commissioned the Panthéon as a church for Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris. Jacques-Germain Soufflot designed it, and Jean-Baptiste Rondelet completed it after Soufflot's death in 1780. Built between 1758 and 1790, it is a Neoclassical monument whose first design took the form of a Greek cross.
The building is 361 feet (110 m) long, 276 feet (84 m) wide and 272 feet (83 m) high. Its stone dome is made of three domes set one within another. The facade has Corinthian columns and a peristyle modeled on a Greek temple.
In 1791 the National Constituent Assembly turned the church into a mausoleum for distinguished French citizens, modeled on the Pantheon in Rome. Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo and Marie Curie are buried here. In 1851 Léon Foucault suspended a 220-foot (67 m) pendulum beneath the dome to show the Earth's rotation, and a copy is displayed there today.
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