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When Louis XV fell ill at Metz in 1744, he invoked the aid of Sainte-Geneviève, patron saint of the city of Paris. Healed, he promised the canons at the abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, a venerable Paris monastery, to erect a church that would honour saint, monarch, and capital. Ten years later Jacques Germain Soufflot (1713-1780) was asked to draw up plans; the basement section had already been completed when the first stone was officially laid in 1764. The church, situated on the highest hill in Paris, was ultimately converted by the revolution thirty years later into the national Pantheon.
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