The Paris Pantheon

Saturday, December 7th, 1991

One Saturday morning we were given a tour of the Pantheon in the Latin Quarter of Paris. The tour was given in French by one of the professors in the French school. My level of French was not much more advanced that an astute tourist so I didn’t catch much of what he said. Though, one of our professors gave brief summaries as we went along. This article in Wikipedia contains about as much as I remember from the tour.

The tour started on the main floor. We were only allowed to poke our head out to peek into the main space because pieces had recently fallen from the ceiling. We then climbed up to the clerestory where the above photo was taken. We continued with a tour around this level viewing some of the remaining mechanical devises used to construct the building and the butresses for the main arches.

From there we made our way up through the dome to the crowning cupola. We entered the dome through the doorway you see in the photo above. The climb up the dome was similar to the climb up St. Peters in Rome. You are sandwiched between an inner dome and an outer dome, climbing up at an angle.

The view from the top was one of the best in Paris. It was in close proximity to many landmarks and they were mostly to the north. So the sun was behind us instead of in front of you like at Montmartre. It was a very bright morning, but incredibly smoggy. You can barely see La Defense in the distance in the photo above.

It a great to see the building along with some of the behind-the-scenes elements. We had another tour in the spring of another Parisian landmark.