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The Pantheon, Paris
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Alphonse-Louis Poitevin
French, Paris, 1842
Daguerreotype
5 15/16 x 4 in.
84.XT.265.12

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A group of visitors is frozen in time at the steps of the Pantheon, a famous Neoclassical building in Paris. Barely visible horses, carriages, and sightseers give an awe-inspiring sense of scale to the scene. Louis-Alphonse Poitevin observed the enormous edifice--72 feet high and 276 feet wide--from the roof of one of the buildings that faced it. Begun in 1757 as the Church of Sainte-Geneviève, the Pantheon is now a civic building housing the remains of some of France's most famous citizens.