PANTHEON (

See also:

• LAT

Lat. pantheum or pantheon; Gr. srav& ov, all-

See also:

• HOLY

holy, from re, s, all, and Oeor

See also:

• GOD

god)  , the name of two buildings in Rome and Paris respectively; more generally, the name of any building in which as a mark of honour the bodies of the nation's famous men are buried, or " memorials " or monuments to them are placed . Thus Westminster Abbey is sometimes styled the British " Pantheon," and the rotunda in the Escorial where the kings of Spain are buried also bears the name . Near Regensburg (q.v.) is the pantheon of German worthies, known as the Valhalla . The first building to which the name was given was that built in Rome in 27 B.C. by Agrippa; it was burned later and the existing building was erected in the reign of Hadrian; since A.D . 609 it has been a Christian church, S Maria Rotunda . It was the Paris building that gave rise to the generic use of the term for a building where a nation's illustrious dead rest . The Pantheon in Paris was the church built in the classical style by Soufflot; it was begun in 1764 and consecrated to the patroness of the city, Sainte Genevieve . At the Revolution it was secularized under the name of Le Pantheon, and dedicated to the great men of the nation . It was reconsecrated in 1828 for worship, was again secularized in 183o, was once more a place of worship from 1851 to 1870, and was then a third time secularized . On the entablature is inscribed the words Aux Grandes Holmes La Patrie Reconnaissance . The decree of 1885 finally established the building for the purpose for which the name now stands .