Explore Paris

The Panthéon stands on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève in the Latin Quarter, built between 1758 and 1790 to a design by Jacques-Germain Soufflot. Commissioned by Louis XV as a church for Paris's patron saint, it was turned into a secular mausoleum during the Revolution. Its crypt holds the tombs of figures including Voltaire, Rousseau and Marie Curie.

A rectangular square in Paris's 1st arrondissement, laid out from 1698 under Louis XIV with uniform arcaded facades designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart. At its centre stands the Vendôme Column, cast from captured cannon and erected on Napoleon I's orders to commemorate the Battle of Austerlitz.

The Chapelle expiatoire is a Neoclassical chapel in the 8th arrondissement, built in 1816-1826 on the site of the former Madeleine Cemetery, where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were buried after their executions. Designed by Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine, it stands in a walled garden, Square Louis XVI.

The Arc de Triomphe stands at the centre of Place Charles de Gaulle, at the western end of the Champs-Élysées, commissioned to honour those who fought in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Victories and generals' names are engraved on its surfaces, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier lies beneath its vault. Stairs lead to a terrace at the top.