Description
The Pantheon is the Roman temple of all the gods, in the heart of the historic center, and the best-preserved ancient monument in Rome. Behind a porch of giant columns hides a round hall covered by a dome with a hole at the top.
First to see is the porch: sixteen Corinthian granite columns, eight gray and eight pink, under a pediment with the inscription recalling Agrippa. Then you step in, and the surprise is the space: a cylinder topped by a hemisphere, as high as it is wide.
The dome has a diameter of over 43 meters and still holds the record as the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. The coffers get smaller toward the top and the materials lighter: volcanic lapilli near the oculus, the nine-meter opening through which the light enters.
The light of the oculus draws a circle that moves across the walls with the sun, and on rainy days the water really does come in and drains through the 22 holes in the original, slightly convex floor.
Raphael and the first two kings of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II and Umberto I, are buried inside. The Pantheon is still a church in use today.
The first temple was built by Agrippa, Augustus's son-in-law. After two fires it was rebuilt under Hadrian, in the 2nd century, in a revolutionary form: the dome was cast in a single block over an enormous wooden scaffolding.
It was saved by a gift. In 608 the emperor Phocas gave it to Pope Boniface IV, who made it a church: so it escaped the plundering that befell the other pagan temples. Not entirely, though.
In the 1600s Urban VIII Barberini had the bronze of the portico melted down, partly for St. Peter's Baldacchino. A pasquinade commented: "What the barbarians did not do, the Barberini did."
A medieval legend tells of Pietro Barliario, a magician who had sold his soul to the devil. Repentant, he took refuge in the Pantheon and was saved; the devil, furious, circled the temple several times without being able to enter. Inside, colored marbles cover the walls between niches and aedicules.
Don't miss
• The oculus and the moving light.
• Raphael's tomb.
• The tombs of the kings of Italy.
• The porch with its monolithic columns.
Did you know?
• The height up to the oculus equals the diameter of the rotunda.
• At Pentecost a rain of rose petals is let fall through the oculus.
• The floor has 22 holes to let the rain drain away.
First to see is the porch: sixteen Corinthian granite columns, eight gray and eight pink, under a pediment with the inscription recalling Agrippa. Then you step in, and the surprise is the space: a cylinder topped by a hemisphere, as high as it is wide.
The dome has a diameter of over 43 meters and still holds the record as the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. The coffers get smaller toward the top and the materials lighter: volcanic lapilli near the oculus, the nine-meter opening through which the light enters.
The light of the oculus draws a circle that moves across the walls with the sun, and on rainy days the water really does come in and drains through the 22 holes in the original, slightly convex floor.
Raphael and the first two kings of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II and Umberto I, are buried inside. The Pantheon is still a church in use today.
The first temple was built by Agrippa, Augustus's son-in-law. After two fires it was rebuilt under Hadrian, in the 2nd century, in a revolutionary form: the dome was cast in a single block over an enormous wooden scaffolding.
It was saved by a gift. In 608 the emperor Phocas gave it to Pope Boniface IV, who made it a church: so it escaped the plundering that befell the other pagan temples. Not entirely, though.
In the 1600s Urban VIII Barberini had the bronze of the portico melted down, partly for St. Peter's Baldacchino. A pasquinade commented: "What the barbarians did not do, the Barberini did."
A medieval legend tells of Pietro Barliario, a magician who had sold his soul to the devil. Repentant, he took refuge in the Pantheon and was saved; the devil, furious, circled the temple several times without being able to enter. Inside, colored marbles cover the walls between niches and aedicules.
Don't miss
• The oculus and the moving light.
• Raphael's tomb.
• The tombs of the kings of Italy.
• The porch with its monolithic columns.
Did you know?
• The height up to the oculus equals the diameter of the rotunda.
• At Pentecost a rain of rose petals is let fall through the oculus.
• The floor has 22 holes to let the rain drain away.