Place du Panthéon

The structure before you was originally financed by a massive royal lottery. In seventeen forty-four, King Louis the Fifteenth fell critically ill and vowed to rebuild a derelict abbey in honor of Saint Genevieve if he survived. When his health returned, he kept that promise by commissioning this site, which stood as the tallest building in Paris for nearly a century until the Eiffel Tower surpassed it in eighteen eighty-nine.