La Madeleine, Paris in the context of "Pediment"

The Palais Bourbon (pronounced [pa.lɛ buʁ.bɔ̃]) is the meeting place of the National Assembly, the lower legislative chamber of the French Parliament. It is in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, on the Rive Gauche of the Seine across from the Place de la Concorde. The official address is on the Rue de l'Université, facing the Place du Palais-Bourbon.

The original palace was built beginning in 1722 for Louise Françoise de Bourbon, Duchess of Bourbon, the legitimised daughter of Louis XIV and the Marquise de Montespan. Four successive architects – Lorenzo Giardini, Pierre Cailleteau, Jean Aubert and Ange-Jacques Gabriel – completed the palace in 1728. It was then confiscated from Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé, during the French Revolution and nationalised. From 1795 to 1799, during the Directory, it was the meeting place of the Council of Five Hundred, which chose the government leaders. Beginning in 1806, during Napoleon Bonaparte's First French Empire, Bernard Poyet's Neoclassical façade was added to mirror that of the Église de la Madeleine, facing it across the Seine beyond the Place de la Concorde.

Pedimental sculpture is a form of architectural sculpture designed for installation in the tympanum, the space enclosed by the architectural element called the pediment. Originally a feature of Ancient Greek architecture, pedimental sculpture started as a means to decorate a pediment in its simplest form: a low triangle, like a gable, above an horizontal base or entablature. However, as classical architecture developed from the basis of Ancient Greek and Roman architecture, the varieties of pedimental sculpture also developed. The sculpture can be either freestanding or relief sculpture, in which case it is attached to the back wall of the pediment. Harris in The Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Architecture defines pediment as "In classical architecture, the triangular gable end of the roof above the horizontal cornice, often filled with sculpture." Pediments can also be used to crown doors or windows.

In Romanesque architecture, and very often in Gothic architecture, the tympanum is usually semi-circular at the top, and the sculptural groups, usually with religious subjects, adapted to fit the new spaces. In the Renaissance triangular pediments returned, as gradually did sculptural groups within them, becoming very popular for important buildings in the 19th century.

Pediments are a form of gable in classical architecture, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the cornice (an elaborated lintel), or entablature if supported by columns. In ancient architecture, a wide and low triangular pediment (the side angles 12.5° to 16°) typically formed the top element of the portico of a Greek temple, a style continued in Roman temples. But large pediments were rare on other types of building before Renaissance architecture. For symmetric designs, it provides a center point and is often used to add grandness to entrances.

The cornice continues round the top of the pediment, as well as below it; the rising sides are often called the "raking cornice". The tympanum is the triangular area within the pediment, which is often decorated with a pedimental sculpture which may be freestanding or a relief sculpture. The tympanum may hold an inscription, or in modern times, a clock face.

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (UK: /ˈsæ̃sɒ̃(s)/, US: /sæ̃ˈsɒ̃(s)/, French: [ʃaʁl kamij sɛ̃sɑ̃(s)] 9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Second Piano Concerto (1868), the First Cello Concerto (1872), Danse macabre (1874), the opera Samson and Delilah (1877), the Third Violin Concerto (1880), the Third ("Organ") Symphony (1886) and The Carnival of the Animals (1886).

Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy; he made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire. After leaving the post twenty years later, he was a successful freelance pianist and composer, in demand in Europe and the Americas.

The Maison carrée (French pronunciation: [mɛzɔ̃ kaʁe]; French for "square house") is an ancient Roman temple in Nîmes, southern France; it is one of the best-preserved Roman temples to survive in the territory of the former Roman Empire. It is a mid-sized Augustan provincial temple of the Imperial cult, a caesareum.

The Maison carrée inspired the neoclassical Église de la Madeleine in Paris, St. Marcellinus Church in Rogalin, Poland, and in the United States the Virginia State Capitol, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson, who had a stucco model made of the Maison carrée while he was minister to France in 1785.