Pantheon: Resting Place of France's Great and Good

AFP | "La Convention Nationale" statue inside the Panthéon in Paris shown on September 15, 2015.
AFP | "La Convention Nationale" statue inside the Panthéon in Paris shown on September 15, 2015.
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Pantheon: Resting Place of France's Great and Good

AFP | "La Convention Nationale" statue inside the Panthéon in Paris shown on September 15, 2015.
AFP | "La Convention Nationale" statue inside the Panthéon in Paris shown on September 15, 2015.

Josephine Baker, the French-American dancer and singer who fought in the French Resistance and later battled racism, will become the first black woman to enter the Pantheon, France's most hallowed resting place, on Tuesday.

The domed mausoleum in the heart of Paris, modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, holds the remains of legendary figures in France's history from the worlds of politics, culture and science, AFP reported.

Seventy men including the philosophers Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau lie next to literary luminaries such as Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola and Victor Hugo.

Only five women before Baker were allowed through its grand portals, which are crowned with an inscription proclaiming: "To great men from a grateful nation."

- Camus refusal -
The declaration has long been a red rag to feminists, who see it as deeply sexist and regularly protest to have it changed.

Simone Veil, a former French minister who survived the Holocaust and fought for abortion rights, was the last woman to be admitted in 2018.

She joined the scientist Marie Curie, Resistance heroes Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz, Germaine Tillion and Sophie Berthelot, who was buried alongside her chemist husband Marcellin Berthelot.

The French president decides who has the right to be laid to rest there.

President Emmanuel Macron rejected a campaign earlier this year to rebury the French poet Arthur Rimbaud there, both to honour his work as a poet and his newfound fame as a gay icon.

However, descendants can overrule the president, as happened when the family of existentialist writer Albert Camus thwarted a bid in 2009 by then-president Nicolas Sarkozy to move his remains to the Pantheon.

Veil's admission prompted a sharp rise in visitors to 860,000 a year, but a far cry from the millions who flock to the Eiffel Tower.



New Searches Underway in Portugal Near Where Madeleine McCann Disappeared in 2007

 A Portuguese official during a search operation in a vast area between the cities of Lagos and Praia da Luz for Madeleine McCann, in Lagos, Portugal, 03 June 2025. (EPA)
A Portuguese official during a search operation in a vast area between the cities of Lagos and Praia da Luz for Madeleine McCann, in Lagos, Portugal, 03 June 2025. (EPA)
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New Searches Underway in Portugal Near Where Madeleine McCann Disappeared in 2007

 A Portuguese official during a search operation in a vast area between the cities of Lagos and Praia da Luz for Madeleine McCann, in Lagos, Portugal, 03 June 2025. (EPA)
A Portuguese official during a search operation in a vast area between the cities of Lagos and Praia da Luz for Madeleine McCann, in Lagos, Portugal, 03 June 2025. (EPA)

Police investigating the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann searched near an abandoned rural building in southern Portugal on Tuesday as they launched fresh probes near the holiday resort where she was last seen 18 years ago.

The case received worldwide interest for several years, with reports of sightings of McCann occurring as far away as Australia, while books and television documentaries were produced about her disappearance.

German investigators and Portuguese police officers and firefighters were searching in the countryside several miles from the Praia da Luz resort, where the 3-year-old disappeared from her bed while on vacation with her family on May 3, 2007.

The teams were seen using pickaxes, shovels and chainsaws to clear dense vegetation and dig near a derelict building. Firefighters pumped water out of a well.

Almost two decades on, investigators in the UK, Portugal and Germany are still piecing together what happened on the night the toddler disappeared. She was in the same room as her brother and sister — 2-year-old twins — while their parents, Kate and Gerry, had dinner with friends outside.

Portuguese police said Monday that detectives were acting on a request from a German public prosecutor as they carry out “a broad range” of searches this week in the area of Lagos, in southern Portugal.

The main suspect is a German national identified by media as Christian Brueckner, who is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in Portugal in 2005.

He is under investigation on suspicion of murder in the McCann case but hasn’t been charged. He spent many years in Portugal, including in Praia da Luz, around the time of the child’s disappearance. Brueckner has denied any involvement.

The last time police resumed searches in the case was in 2023, when detectives from the three countries took part in an operation searching near a dam and a reservoir about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the resort.

McCann's family marked the 18th anniversary of her disappearance last month, and expressed their determination to keep searching.