Ancient Rome: the pantheon is the most intact building of Ancient Rome

ANCIENT ROME TOUR: THE PANTHEON IS THE MOST INTACT BUILDING OF ANCIENT ROME

The writer Goethe wrote in his "Italian Journey" : "The most important monuments I take very slowly; I do nothing except look, go away, and come back and look again. Only in Rome can one educate oneself for Rome."

And only in the Pantheon can one educate oneself for the other monuments of the ancient Rome. Not even the best photograph captures the mysterious contrast of light and darkness. To begin with, the Pantheon is a perfect space; the diameter of the rotunda is the same as its height: 142 feet. It is one of the only Roman structures to survive intact since antiquity. Perhaps the invading Barbarians were so overwhelmed by the monument that they didn't take it apart brick by brick, as they did so many others. Although the Pantheon was consecrated as a church in 609, Christianity has only a tenuous hold on it.

The Pantheon is defined by its oculus, a bright opening in the center of the dome. It renders the space an inside-out sundial: the shaft of light that shines through the oculus slowly moves across the dome over the course of the day. A well-trained eye can tell the month and the hour by the slant of light but not the year. Time collapses inside the Pantheon. While most Roman architectural achievements are meant to communicate the civilization's mastery over nature, the Pantheon maintains a deep connection to it, to the essential elements of light and sky. Rain pours through the oculus and collects in a drain in the center of the floor, as does snow, on the rare and wonderful occasions when it snows in Rome.

The Pantheon sits in the middle of Rome, between the Vatican and the Palatine Hill, yet belonging to neither. While the sheer size of St. Peter's declares authority, and the Colosseum's much diminished grandeur still projects imperial glory - in part because Mussolini tore down entire neighborhoods to build parade routes leading to each monument - the rather humble Pantheon doesn't overwhelm from afar. The city grew up around it. It fits so snugly into its surroundings that when you approach it from the narrow streets that lead there, it inspires curiosity or pleasant surprise more than slack-jawed awe.

That is, until you go inside. The Pantheon is a breathtaking work of engineering; its foundations and lower walls are built of solid stuff, which slowly give way to lighter materials. Close to the oculus, the cement is mixed with pumice. The oculus may appear small from below, but is in fact 29 feet across. The whole space manages to be at once more vast and more intimate than its actual dimensions might suggest.

Although the inscription on the pediment declares, "M. Agrippa, son of Lucius, Consul during his third consulate, built this," it was actually Hadrian who built the Pantheon as a rotunda, around A.D. 125, using bricks from Agrippa's earlier rectangular temple. In the 17th century, the pope Barberini Urban VIII had the bronze stripped from inside the roof of the portico for use in saint Peter basilica canopy and the tall columns supporting it restored; a Corinthian capital was added to one and adorned with the Barberini family symbol, a honeybee. There were other alterations, when for example Bernini added two little bell towers called by the Romans " donkey ears ", that were demolished in 19th century.

In the 15th century, the Pantheon was adorned with paintings: the most famous is the "Annunciazione" by Melozzo da Forlì.

Since the Renaissance the Pantheon has been used as the cemetery of the artists. Among those buried there are the painters Raphael and Annibale Caracci, the architect Baldassare Peruzzi and two kings of Italy: Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I, as well as Vittorio Emanuele's Queen, Margherita.

Although Italy became a republic in 1946, volunteer members of Italian monarchist organisations maintain a vigil over the royal tombs in the Pantheon. This has aroused protests from time to time from republicans, but the Catholic authorities allow the practice to continue, although the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage is in charge of the security and maintenance. The Pantheon is still a church and Masses are still celebrated in the church. This church,with the catholic name of " Santa Maria ad Martyres " holds sometimes lectures of the Comedy ( Hell, Purgatory, Heaven ) of the national italian poet Dante Alighieri.

Hadrian said, "My intentions had been that this sanctuary of All Gods should reproduce the likeness of the terrestrial globe and of the stellar sphere...The cupola...revealed the sky through a great hole at the center, showing alternately dark and blue. This temple, both open and mysteriously enclosed, was conceived as a solar quadrant. The hours would make their round on that caissoned ceiling so carefully polished by Greek artisans; the disk of daylight would rest suspended there like a shield of gold; rain would form its clear pool on the pavement below, prayers would rise like smoke toward that void where we place the gods."

Michelangelo the great architect and painter of the Sistine chapel once described the design of the Pantheon as an "angelic and not human design.