The Pantheon - Less is more

Here we are at the Pantheon, undoubtedly the city’s best preserved ancient monument. It’s almost two thousand years old, and is more or less completely intact. Pantheon is a Greek word meaning “honour all Gods”, so the Pantheon is a temple. In fact the first temple on this site was constructed by Agrippa, the son in law of the emperor Augustus some time between 29 and 19BC.

However, it was destroyed by fire, with only the façade remaining. The rebuilt temple which we’re now looking at was completed under Emperor Hadrian’s reign around 125AD.

From here we’re looking at 16 massive Corinthian columns 12 metres tall and one point five
metres in diameter. The columns were dragged all the way from Egypt and support a
triangular pediment with an inscription, in Latin of course, attributing the Pantheon to Marcus
Agrippa built in his third consulate. Hadrian left the inscription as a gesture to his
predecessor when he rebuilt the Pantheon.

Let’s go inside. The most fascinating part of the Pantheon is its giant dome, with its famous
hole in the top, known as the oculus). The dome was the largest for 1300 years and
furthermore it remains the largest unsupported dome in the world today! Its diameter is 43.3
meters and is in perfect proportion - the distance from the floor to the top of the dome is
exactly equal to its diameter. So vertically and horizontally it measures the same.
As you can see it features sunken panels in ever decreasing size, known as coffers, which
lead our eyes up to the oculus, which provides the temple with its only source of natural light,
apart from the entry door. The oculus itself is 7.8 metres in diameter.

From a structural perspective building a dome that doesn’t collapse is always a challenge,
even more so two thousand years ago! In the case of the Pantheon, heavier stone like
travertine marble was used in the lower parts of the dome while much lighter volcanic rock
was used higher up. The Pantheon is such a feat of engineering; it continues to be studied
by engineering students at university today.

The Pantheon, which is still a church contains the tomb of one our greatest artists Raphael,
as well as those of several Italian Kings and poets.

Finally, I guess some of you are wondering what happens when it rains. Well, the rain comes through the oculus, falls to the floor and runs into these holes below. Do you see them? Indeed, those clever Romans thought of everything!