Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The domed building in Paris housing the Institut de France is a masterpiece of early French
neoclassical architecture, but France's greatest neoclassical architect of the 18th century was
Jacques-Germain Soufflot, creator of the Panthéon in the Latin Quarter.
Neoclassicism came into its own under Napoléon, who used it extensively for monument-
al architecture intended to embody the grandeur of imperial France and its capital: the Arc
de Triomphe, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, Église de Ste-Marie Madeleine, the Bourse
de Commerce, and the Assemblée Nationale in the Palais Bourbon. Fittingly, the climax to
this great 19th-century movement was Palais Garnier, the city's opera house designed by
Charles Garnier.
The Panthéon
BRUNO DE HOGUES / GETTY IMAGES ©
