Léon Gambetta's Urn

Down in the crypt, the air turns cool. This is where the dead rest, so visitors walk through quietly and with respect. The crypt can hold at least 300 coffins, and about 80 are here now. We can't see all of them, so we'll focus on the key figures who made major contributions to French history.

First is the urn of Léon Gambetta, a 19th-century politician. The name may not ring a bell, but he was one of the leading opponents of Napoleon III, who seized power in a coup and made himself emperor. After the Revolution of 1789, France founded its First Republic, but it didn't hold. Ten years later, Napoleon staged a coup and became Emperor Napoleon I, and some 50 years after that, Napoleon III did the same thing again. Each time, republicans pushed back, and Gambetta was one of them. He made his name opposing Napoleon III's empire, and when it fell and the Third Republic was founded, he proclaimed the republic himself.

Unlike the other figures here, Gambetta rests in an urn rather than a coffin. The inscription reads "le coeur de Léon Gambetta," French for "the heart of Léon Gambetta." The urn holds not ashes or bones left after cremation but his heart; the rest of his remains are in a cemetery in Nice. Burying a body in separate parts is a medieval tradition. Moving a body intact was hard in those days, so it was transported in pieces.

Beneath the inscription is the date November 11, 1920, the day his heart was moved to the Panthéon. It was the 50th anniversary of the Third Republic's proclamation and the second anniversary of the end of World War I, and the date was chosen on purpose. In 1919, France was rebuilding after the devastation of the war, and parliament was looking for an event that would show the country united even after the chaos. It decided to transfer Gambetta, who had proclaimed the Third Republic, along with the unknown soldiers killed in World War I, to the Panthéon (the Unknown Soldier was ultimately buried beneath the Arc de Triomphe instead). November 11, 1920 linked both, and since November 11 is Armistice Day, it is a very important public holiday in France.