Cenotaph for Isaac Newton

Boull�e’s most famous project is the cenotaph for the physicist Isaac Newton. It indicates on one hand the increasing respect shown to civilian “intellectual heroes” since the Enlightenment, and on the other constitutes a very clear example of the explicitly commemorative character of Revolutionary architecture. The global figure of the cenotaph describes the sphere of the universe. In the interior the vaulting is perforated into a giant starry sky. Beneath the immensity of this “vault of heaven rises the sarcophagus of Newton on a stepped plinth.

The drawing shows a night view.