Construction began on the Pantheon as a church for the patron saint of Paris, Saint Genevieve. As so often happens when there is construction there were delays, then more delays, then the revolution happened.

Saint Genevieve’s church was about half finished. Egalité was in the air, at least for a short while, and religion was out. So the idea became to transition the design from religious to a secular mausoleum for honored citizens. The architectural result was one part church, and one part based on the Pantheon in Rome.

Over the years the Pantheon bounced back and forth from religious to secular temple, with great folks interred including Marie Curie, Victor Hugo, Voltaire, and Emil Zola.

In the first image, I have pointed my camera at the domes of the Pantheon using a very wide angle lens (15mm). The next image (below), taken by my friend Julian Köpke, shows me making the first photo, along with some possible annotations to the issues of curvature in space and time.