1-157-819 - Oxford Science Archive/Heritage Images

Rue Royale and la Madeleine, Paris, with cars and a motorbus on the street, c1900. Louis XV ordered the building of a church at the end of Rue Royale early in 1764, but the project was neglected until his successor, Louis XVI decided that the building be built on the model of the Pantheon. Construction halted during the French Revolution, but in 1806 Napoleon decided the building should be completed as a monument to the triumphs of his army. The building, constructed in the style of a Classical temple, was finished in 1814, but Napoleon had been forced to abdicate and Louis XVIII decreed that la Madeleine would, after all, be a church.