Friday October 4, 2013, Notre Dame, Deportation Memorial, and the Pantheon

We missed our previous Notre Dame tour but thought we'd head over and get a close-up look anyway today.

So here's the front.

This is the doorway on the left. The sculpture of the guy holding his own head caught my attention:

One side. I have to say this is a really spooky looking building:

This is a picture taken of the rear of the building. Check out those flying buttresses!

We visited the Holocaust Deportation Memorial, which was on the river right behind Notre Dame. This monument was designed by the architect Georges Henri Pingusson and inaugurated by President Charles de Gaulle in 1962. It memorializes the 160,000 people who were deported from France to the concentration camps between 1940-1945, 85,000 of whom were political activists, resistance fighters, homosexuals and gypsies. 76,000 of them were Jews, including 11,000 children. Only 2,500 of those deported survived. This is a view from outside:

This is the Hall of Remembrance, lined with 160,000 pebbles:

This is the area where the deported people left to board the boats to the concentration camps:

And this is the other side of the same spot:

We then walked over the Pont D'Arts Bridge, which is carpeted with love locks. I think Katherine and Megan attached one of these:

Then we walked over to the Pantheon (under renovation as you can see), an enormous building in the Latin Quarter originally built as a church but, after many changes, now is a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens.

Inside...

Heading down to the crypt:

Voltaire:

Rousseau:

We also saw the crypts of Victor Hugo, Marie & Louis Curie, Louis Braille, Emile Zola, and others.

So after all that walking we had our final stop in a cafe for lunch!