April 27, 2012

• The Pantheon

  You’ve heard of the Pantheon, I’m sure. (Not to be confused with the Parthenon, which is in Greece.)  But what is this Pantheon?  If you know your Latin, you know “pan” means “all” and “theon” must refer to gods.  And you are right! The Pantheon was a temple originally built by Marcus Agrippa (which is why his name is carved into it) but was completely rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian in 126 AD to worship all their gods.  

  

  So, why is it famous? Well, of all the Roman ruins, this is the best preserved. It looks pretty much like it would have  2000 years ago. What happened was that after it stopped being the Pantheon, it was used for other things. Since the 600′s, it’s been a Catholic church named Santa Maria della Rotonda.   Therefore, all the breaking down and stealing the marble and such did not happen to this building. It lets us imagine what all the other places must have looked like when they were functioning.  Just look at all that marble!

   

             

  We walked on the original marble floors, and they were still gorgeous. 

  

   

  The building is round with a porch in front. It’s got a neat dome. Building a dome of marble is heavy, but those Romans knew what they were doing. Instead of putting in reinforcements, they used a type of concrete for the dome. At the bottom of the dome, it’s 20 feet thick, but it gets thinner as it goes higher, and a lighter concrete was used for the upper part. Near the hole in the top (the oculus, which is the only light in the Pantheon), the walls of the dome are only 7.5 feet thick.

  

   

  It’s not a very big building, as you can see. Raphael, the painter, is buried here (or encrypted?) as are several other famous Italians and a few kings.  It’s still a working church, holding mass on special occasions and even weddings. Can you imagine getting married here? Can you imagine how much it must COST to get married here?

       

  The bronze doors are no longer covered in gold, but they are huge (as you can see in these pictures I swiped from the internet)–20 tons each! However, even after all these years, they are so well-balanced on a system of ball bearings that a child can open and shut them with one hand. Yet, they withstood battering rams from barbarians.  You can still see the dents and scratches from them. The barbarians eventually gave up trying to get in. The doors were too strong. (Side note–our guide and several websites say that the doors were the original ones. Other websites say these are not the original doors. Whom to believe?) 

  • 6:45 am
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