The Panthéon began life as something else entirely: a church honouring Saint Geneviève, the fifth-century patron saint of Paris who once rallied Parisians to stand firm against Attila the Hun.

King Louis XV commissioned it, but the Revolution had other ideas, repurposing the neoclassical building as a secular temple to France's greats. The inscription across its façade reads "Aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante": to great men, the grateful homeland.

Of the 81 people honoured here, only six are women, and one of those is present merely because her husband requested her company. Louis Braille, who lost his sight as a child and invented a language read with fingertips, rests here alongside Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Marie Curie. Josephine Baker, the American-born dancer turned French Resistance spy, joined them in 2021.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace these stories through the Latin Quarter, revealing how French identity has continually been reshaped by the remarkable figures interred within.