Font Size: 

The French Panthéon has showed, both in ancient and recent times,several fractures in the stones of its masonry, which also caused the partial closure tothe public visits in the latest decades because of the fall of stone fragments. The FrenchMinistry of Culture and Communication commissioned a new study [1] to identify thecauses of the present disorders, whose results are presented in this paper. Amultidisciplinary approach, with a balanced fusion of historical analysis, precisionsurveys, experimental inspections and numerical modelling, enabled to spot the damagemechanisms that have provoked the first disorders and the ones that are still active,giving hints on the possible solutions. The interest in these studies arises also from thefact that the French Panthéon, designed in the XVIII century with slender structuresand innovative techniques, can be considered as the first building for whom tests onmaterials and “modern” structural calculations have been carried out in a systematicmanner. The present studies can be thus seen as the prosecution of a structuralinspection that started 250 years ago and is still ongoing.