1. There are things that, as a local, you just never get around to doing. When I was living in New York, it took a friend visiting from Colorado for me to finally make it to the Statue of Liberty. In Paris, the examples are many, but one monument I always thought of visiting — after all, I was constantly in the neighborhood — but never got around to seeing was the Pantheon. Now that my sister’s in town, that finally changed.
2. The Pantheon got its start as a neo-classical church, originally built by King Louis XV in honor of Saint Genevieve, one of Paris’ patron saints. However, during the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary period it swung back and forth between place of worship and secular place of burial.
3. Within the actual church are Republican statues, like this one of the National Convention, with revolutionaries flanking Marianne, the female allegory of liberty.
4. In the crypt below, visitors can see the graves of the 75 people buried at the Pantheon, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile Zola, Marie Curie…
5. … and my literary hero, Victor Hugo, whose 215th birthday is right around the corner.