Pantheon, Rome

We visited the Pantheon twice during our trip- it was a structure that had to be seen a couple of times to be able to digest just how incredible and immense it really is. Just standing at the granite columns and huge entry doors is a humbling experience. The Pantheon is the best preserved building among Rome's ancient buildings, being almost 2,000 years old.

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“Think now about all those other perils
Of the night: how high it is to the roof up there
From which a tile falls and smashes your brains;
How many times broken, leaky jars
Fall from windows; how hard they strike and break
The pavement. You could be thought lazy and careless
If you go to dinner without writing a will.
There are as many deaths waiting for you
As there are open windows above your head.
Therefore you should hope and fervently pray
That they only dump their sewage on you.”
from “On the City of Rome” by Decimus Junius Juvenalis (the late 1 st and early 2nd Centuries AD

Rome at night is far more safe in the 21st century than it was 2,000 years ago.

Take advantage of it! Go for a walk. Rome is a great city for walking; its centro storico is roughly a square mile. That is not big at all, but you will be a bigger person for it once you have seen Rome by night. And a smaller person too, having walked off that pasta dinner!

Revisit what you saw during the day, in a different light, the lights of a Roman night. The monuments, palazzi, piazzi, churches, and streets are aglow. The shadows cast by electric lights create dimensions to otherwise familiar sights that can not be imagined during the day. These sights are also far less crowded, giving you an opportunity to see them a little better.

And it is much cooler at night, if you are visiting in the heat of summer.

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This is a building that was origionally built a few years before the birth of Christ.

It is an inspiring building to see and visit. Many artists are buried here.

The centre of the dome is an opening 9 meters wide and apparently the sole source of light.

The use of the marble inside is a revelation.

Its not a good building to take photo's in as I don't like using flash in these places, people who do annoy me, & I don't like annoying others that way

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Rome is full of places you must see,before you can home and say,that you´ve been here.We rented a flat next to Pantheon,so we saw it many times a day at every 10 days.They say,you should eally see it when its raining from the hole in the roof,but we had heat all the time.witch suited us very well,but we didn´t see that rain-efect.

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Built more than 1800 years ago, the magnificent Pantheon building still stands as a reminder of the great Roman empire.
The building's dome, more than 43 meters high is most impressive. It was the largest dome in the world until 1436 when the Florence Cathedral was constructed.
At the top of the dome is a large opening, the oculus, which was the only source of light.
The front portico has three rows of 8 columns, each one with a diameter of 1.5m. A huge bronze door gives access to the cylindrical building. Its diameter equals the interior height of 43,3m.
It was hot day and I can assure you the water tap in front of the fountain serves really Ice cold water so feel safe and go for it if you are thirsty!

The Pantheon has an amazing presence. We were walking all around Rome and we knew the Pantheon was somewhere around us... we started walking down this alley and could see just a corner of the Pantheon up ahead. With each step, centuries and millenia were passing behind us. We were transported into another time. As we rounded the corner, history became the present as this amazing building finally showed us her splendor. I snapped this picture at that moment, and even though a picture is worth a thousand words, a thousand is no where near enough to try to convey what that moment was like.

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If you thought concrete was a relatively modern building material, think again. The Romans were using the stuff long before the architects of the 70s fell in love with it, and nowhere did they use it to better effect and in such a sophisticated way as in Rome's amazing Pantheon.

Worn and somewhat battered though it might be on the outside in its rather cramped surroundings, the Pantheon stands today as the most complete building of the Roman era, a magnificent survivor judged, rightly, one of the most revolutionary buildings in the world. You need to step inside though, through the massive pillars of the portico and into the vast space under the coffered dome , to realize the sheer genius and audacity of the structure - a perfect model of balance and harmony.

Still the largest masonry dome in the world today, nearly 2000 years after it was built, its diameter exactly that of the height from floor to the top of the dome (almost half as big again as the White House dome) makes it a perfect semisphere. Natural light floods the entire building from a single opening in the roof - the oculus. Looking up at the elegant rotunda that appears to float above you, it seems impossible that there are literally tonnes and tonnes of concrete up there, 7 metres thick in places.

Now a major, major attraction and seemingly always full of tourists, the burial place of the artist Raphael and King Vittorio Emanuale, and the Church of Our Lady and the Christian Martyrs, the Pantheon was built as a temple to all the gods of Rome. Michaelangelo said angels, not men, had designed it. Legend claims it owes its survival to divine protection. Maybe it does - its survival is little short of miraculous.

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Don't miss this one!!! The Pantheon (pronounced PAN-tee-on) is one of Rome's most important treasures as it's the most well-preserved structure of its age in the city - possibly in the world. Designed by and constructed under Emperor Hadrian in the early 2nd century, it was originally a Roman temple dedicated to "pan theos"- all the gods - and until the 15th century, the dome was the largest in the world. The diameter and height of this 142-foot dome are exactly the same and a 27" oculus (round opening at the center of the dome) is the only source of interior light.

The Pantheon was spared the building-over or tearing-down of other pre-Christian temples due to its conversion to a Christian church by Pope Boniface IV in AD 609. That still didn't save it from the plundering of bronze roof tiles by Constantine II (who sent them to Constantinople) and bronze portico by Pope Urban III, of the Barberini family. Some of material from the portico was said to have been melted down to make cannon for Castel Sant'Angelo and rest used by Bernini for his magnificant baldacchino in St. Peter's. As the famous saying goes, "What the barbarians didn't do to Rome, the Barberini did"!

Still an active Catholic church dedicated to - here we go again - St. Mary, it's officially known as St. Mary and the Martyrs. It's also a tomb for Italian Kings Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I, painters Raphael and Annibale Carracci, composer Arcangelo Corelli, and architect Baldassare Peruzz.

Pantheon is open 8:30-7:30 Mon - Sat, and 9-6 Sundays. Closed Jan 1, May 1 and Dec. 25th. Entrance is Free.