The ceremony
How panthéonisation works
More than eighty people in over two centuries — the rare process for entering the crypt, and who's gone in most recently.
See current listings on Viator ↗A presidential decree, and a family's consent
In modern practice the decision rests with the President of the Republic, on no set schedule, which is why years can pass between one ceremony and the next. Families can decline to move the body itself, in which case a symbolic coffin enters the crypt instead.
Joséphine Baker, 2021
The American-born entertainer and Resistance member was honoured on 30 November 2021, the first Black woman to receive the distinction. Her body remains in Monaco; the cenotaph in the crypt holds soil from her birthplace in Missouri, from France, and from her resting place in Monaco.
Missak and Mélinée Manouchian, 2024
On 21 February 2024 — eighty years to the day after Missak's execution — the Armenian resistance fighter and his wife Mélinée entered the crypt together.
Robert Badinter, 2025
The former justice minister who abolished the death penalty in France was honoured on 9 October 2025, the anniversary of the 1981 abolition law. At his widow's wish his body stayed in its grave; the coffin in the crypt holds objects from his life, his lawyer's robe among them.
Marc and Simonne Bloch, 2026
Marc Bloch, the historian and resistance fighter shot by the Gestapo in 1944, was honoured with his wife Simonne on 23 June 2026. Both coffins are symbolic: his ashes remain in his village grave at his family's request, and her remains were lost in a common grave.
Reading the crypt as a timeline
Walk the chambers in order of entry rather than fame, and the crypt reads as a timeline of what France has chosen to honour — Revolutionary philosophers first, then Napoleon's dignitaries, then the writers and scientists of the Republic, and in recent decades, increasingly, people who resisted something.