On the exterior is St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris. It was completed in 1790 and was a Christian church until 1885, when Victor Hugo was entombed here. Since then it has become a secular "temple of the nation," where French Presidents may honor citizens by entombing them.
Famous people entombed at the Pantheon include Pierre & Marie Curie, Voltaire, Rousseau, Alexandre Dumas (author of the Three Musketeers), Victor Hugo (author of Les Miserables and the Hunchback of Notre Dame), and Rene Cassin, writer of the Universal Declaration of human rights. The crypt was a bit creepy.
The coolest part was Foucault's pendulum, which was an experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth in 1851. This was the first dynamic proof that the Earth rotated. Wikipedia quote about it: "The experimental apparatus consists of a tall pendulum free to oscillate in any vertical plane. The direction along which the pendulum swings rotates with time because of Earth's daily rotation."
In just a few hours I am heading off to Prague for the weekend! I am quite excited for this trip because everyone I know who's been there has raved about it. Also, we have received several recommendations ranging from hostel accommodations to pub crawls, so I think we should be set (except for the whole speaking Czech thing...)
