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The Pantheon
 (Photo : C. Jadot) |
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Situated on the Campus Martius, between the Baths of Agrippa and the Baths of Nero, the Pantheon is certainly the best preserved of all the Roman buildings. As its Greek name indicates, this round temple with a dome roof is consecrated to "all the gods", especially Mars and Venus, the guardians of the Gens Iulia.
It was first built under Augustus by Agrippa in 27BC. Reconstructed under Hadrian it was reorientated, and the circular form it has kept until nowadays was added.
The Pantheon has not always been as we can see it today. Its original shape was that of a traditional rectangular temple (19.82 by 43.7 m) with the façade facing south. The current portico gives us some idea of it if we imagine the building without the cylindrical structure. The original shape of the Pantheon dates back to the building by Agrippa in 27-25BC.
The building was burnt down in 80AD under Titus; Domitian took care of its restoration. After it was burnt down again under Trajan in 110AD, Hadrian rebuilt it during the first years of his reign in 118-125AD, turning the façade of the new building to the North. The portico and the dome that can be seen today date back to this period. On that occasion, Hadrian had the name of the first builder, Agrippa, engraved on the pediment of the edifice:
M(arcus) Agrippa L(uci) F(ilius) co(n)s(ul) tertium fecit "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, consul for the third time, had it built"
Under the first inscription, a second one in smaller letters testifies to a restoration by Septimus Severus and Caracalla in 202AD.
In its current shape, the Pantheon is externally formed of a circular part linked to a front part, the pronaos, with columns and a pediment. It is completely different from temples of Hellenic style. The dome, whose diameter (43.3 m) equals the total height of the building has a coffered ceiling and a huge opening (9 m in diameter) in its centre that was the only source of light. The cylindrical wall that supports the dome is 6 m wide.
A portico, 33.10 m wide and 15.5 m deep, constitutes the façade of the Pantheon. It has 16 white marble columns, 11.6 m high and topped by Corinthian capitals: eight on the façade, two on each side (excluding the corner columns) and two ranks of two dividing the portico into three parts widthways. With these divisions by columns, the pronaos resembles a three-naved temple with three large niches at its far end: the central niche with its rectangular bronze door serves as an entry to the Pantheon, and the two lateral circular niches probably contained the statues of Augustus and Agrippa.
The inside of the rotunda that is built in brick-covered rubble was in the past sumptuously covered with marble for the bottom parts and golden bronze for the coffers. The inside is punctuated from the foot of the wall by a string of superb monolithic columns distributed in front of the eight niches that are alternately rounded and rectangular.
The Pantheon was closed in the 4th century by the Christian emperors, like all the other pagan places of worship. Given to Pope Bonifacius by the Byzantine emperor Phocas, it was converted into a church under the name of S. Maria ad Martyres in 609AD. It is certainly to this conversion that the extraordinary degree of preservation of the Pantheon is owed. It was unfortunately stripped of its bronzes, especially in the 17th century under Urban VIII (1623-1644) who melted them down to make the canopy beneath the dome of St. Peter's.
In this sanctuary, two kings of Italy were buried (Victor-Emanuel II and Umberto I) as well as artists such as Raphael.
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