The Pantheon is a Roman temple and now it is a Catholic church in Rome, Italy. The more primal temple was approved by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD). It was restored by the emperor Hadrian and seemingly committed about 126AD.
The Roman Pantheon is the most conserved and famous building of ancient Rome. It is a Roman temple devoted to all the gods of pagan Rome.
In the consequence of the Battle of Actium (31 BC), Marcus Agrippa started an impressive building program: the Pantheon was a piece of the collection created by him on his part in the Campus Martius in 29–19 BC, which included three buildings leveled from south to north: the Baths of Agrippa, the Basilica of Neptune, and the Pantheon. It seems obvious that the Pantheon and the Basilica of Neptune were Agrippa’s private temple, not public temples. The past would help illustrate how the building could have so easily lost its innovative name and design in such a short period of time.
The inscription on the Pantheon translates to: “Marcus Agrippa, the son of Lucius, three times consul, built this.” The inscription was a source of confusion for a long time regarding the origins of the building.
The building was first addressed by stairs. Later the plan raised the level of the ground heading to the arcade, reducing these steps. The pediment was adorned with carving, of gilded bronze. Cuts marking the area of clips that included the carving propose that its purpose was likely a falcon in a crown; decorations extended from the crown into the edges of the pediment. The Pantheon’s entrance was designed for solid granite pillars with rods scaling about 100 tonnes and resources 10 Roman meters tall in the Corinthian manner. The grey granite columns that were used in the Pantheon’s pronaos were quarried in Egypt in the eastern mountains. Each was 11.9 meters tall, 1.5 meters in diameter, and 60 tonnes in weight. These were drawn more than 100 km from the quarry to the stream on wooden boats. They were moved down the Nile River and then shifted to vessels to meet the Mediterranean Sea to the Roman port. There, they were sold back onto boats and drew up the Tiber River to Rome. Then they rolled them on rollers to the construction site.
The large bronze doors to the cella, covering 4.45m wide by 7.53m high, are the oldest in Rome.
The oculus at the peak of the dome was never closed, allowing rain through the dome and onto the floor. Because of this, the central floor is provided with drains and has been built with a slope of about 30 centimeters to improve water flow.
Circles and squares form the unifying theme of the interior design.
The checkerboard tiles pattern varies with the circles of dull coffers in the dome. Each zone of the depths, from floor to dome, is divided according to a mixed scheme. As a result, the inner florid zones do not bound. The overall outcome is an important introduction according to the main support of the building, even though the circular area covered by a dome is naturally complex.
BY DHANYA
