Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Older Than the Hills?

A visit to the Panthéon is a bit of a mini-course in French history. There are incredible mural style paintings of great moments like the crowning of Clovis, the first Christian king of France, and the saving of Paris from starvation by St. Genevieve in the 5th century; lots of monuments to French military heros; and a crypt full of great men (and yes they're mostly men) like Rousseau, Voltaire, Dumas, Zola, and Louis Braille.

There's even a re-creation of Foucault's pendulum which proves that the earth actually turns. You may have seen such a pendulum elsewhere (as I did in the Smithsonian in Washington) but you should know that this is the site where M. Foucault actually did the experiment in the first place.

All very interesting but the only thing that motivated me to pull out my camera was this:

Fossilized remains of sea creatures from a long ago France, immortalized on the front steps.

4 comments:

Karin B (Looking for Ballast) said...

There are too many things I have not yet done here in Paris even tho' I have been here 22 months already. This is one of them. :)

It shall go on the list...

I like the fossilized remains! Very cool stuff.

debbie in toronto said...

very neat...and I thought I was old as the hills...ha ha

Starman said...

The building alone is worth the visit.

PeterParis said...

A very original illustration of the Pantheon! :-) (I have to look closer on the steps next time!)

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