The Central Aisle and the Panthéon's Layout

You're now standing in the central aisle, where the heart of the Panthéon opens up before you. A crowd has gathered in the middle to watch Foucault's Pendulum swing from the dome. We'll look at the pendulum in detail shortly. First, a quick look at the layout.

The Panthéon is built in the shape of a Greek cross, centered on the pendulum you see ahead. A cross whose arms are all the same length is called a Greek cross. The building takes the form of a cross because it was originally a church, but most churches use a Latin cross, with a longer vertical arm: the shape we usually picture. Compare the floor plan of a Latin-cross church to see the difference.

The reason the Panthéon is unusual is that its architect, Soufflot, drew heavily on ancient Greek architecture, so he chose a Greek cross over the more common Latin one. Not everything is Greek, though; the building also draws on the Gothic style.

Gothic usually brings to mind soaring buildings and big windows. Look around: the ceiling is very high, but the windows, a signature Gothic feature, are almost nowhere to be seen. There were originally about 40 large windows. When the church became a national mausoleum, people felt the interior was too bright and that a national burial place should be more solemn, so all the windows were blocked up. The blank walls would have looked plain, so paintings were added, and the murals around you today date from that time.

Because the building has religious meaning and houses France's heroes, the murals depict figures considered great from a religious and national point of view. Let's look at them one by one, starting with the mural on the left as you face the pendulum.