The Pantheon – intriguing and incomprehensible

Pantheon – my favorite building on the plant

I have no idea why, but the Pantheon is my favorite building on the planet.   Perhaps it is because the architecture is visually mesmerizing and it shear genius of the construction is incomprehensible.  As if that wasn’t enough, the Pantheon sits in beautiful Piazza Della Rotonda that is full of Italian restaurants, a beautiful fountain and busking musicians who should be sitting in the front row of an orchestra.  A sensory feast.

 

The Pantheon is the best preserved Ancient Roman monument 2000 years after it was built.  How it has survived throughout history is both a mystery and somewhat of a miracle – but there have been a few iterations of the Pantheon.  The Pantheon was first build as a temple dedicated to Romulus, the mythological founder of Rome and a temple to all Gods before it became the first pagan temple to become a church in 609AD.  Today it is a church dedicated to St. Mary of the Martyrs.

Historians think that Emperor Augustus commissioned Agrippa to build the first Pantheon in 27BC; it was burned in the great fire of 80AD and rebuilt by Emperor Domitian but it was struck by lightning and burned again in 110AD.  Finally, in 120 AD, the Pantheon was rebuilt as we know it today by Emperor Hadrian.

From the Outside

The first thing you notice as you approach the Pantheon are the 16 spectacular Greek style Corinthian columns.  These 60 ton giants travelled from Egypt. All 16 columns where dragged to the Nile River from the quarry, floated down the Nile River to the Mediterranean Sea where they were met by Roman ships and transported to Roman port, where they were placed back onto barges and floated up the Tiber River to Rome to the construction site.  That story alone is enough to make you stand back in awe of the portico.

From the Inside

The majestic scale of the interior of the Pantheon

Then there is that amazing dome.  It is unsupported!  It is the largest in the world at 43m in diameter.  It’s shear weight holds it in place.  Something that I hadn’t realized, is that the dome is in perfect proportion with cylindrical walls below – the distance from the floor to the top of the dome is exactly equal to its diameter and the materials in the upper part of the dome are lighter and decrease in thickness.

At the centre of the dome is the famous Oculus.  A 9 metre diameter hole that allows light to stream down from the heaven.  The Pantheon has not windows.  The Oculus is the only source of light.  I also learnt that the Oculus let the smoke from sacred fires.

A building with a hole in the roof must let rain in, right?  Well it does, but the slope of the marble floor to the centre of the room with its camouflaged drainage holes take care of that.  The floor, by the way, is the original floor that has survived through all iterations of the Pantheon over the years. I was told that rain rarely falls inside the dome.  Well let me tell you, it did on the day I visited!

 

Piazza Della Rotonda

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