[HIGHLIGHTS] INTERVIEW - How did the Pantheon become the sanctuary of the great figures of the nation?

Virginie Girod and Barbara Wolffer retrace the eventful journey of the Temple of the Republic. Originally, the Pantheon was not intended to be a national necropolis.

It's a church! Louis XV, who left to inspect his troops in Metz in 1744, fell ill and invoked the protection of Sainte-Geneviève. As political regimes changed, the building was returned to the Church several times. The entry of Victor Hugo in 1885 definitively ratified the status of national Necropolis. The Pantheon has since become ‘the republican place par excellence’