Ladies and Gentlemen, The Pantheon

I don’t know much about architecture. I suppose I enjoy a good looking building as much as the next guy but certainly can’t intelligently identify its appeal, let alone discuss form, structure, etc. So I’m a little surprised by how attracted I am to this building. St. Peter’s Basilica is more imposing, the enormity of the Colosseum is more mindboggling, and any number of the baroque churches may be more graceful, but this building seems to me to be, well, perfect.
OK, maybe it’s not perfect on the outside but I think that works as a handy bit of a misdirection. It’s a fairly simple structure: a drum shaped rotunda with a dome on top (more on the dome later), introduced by a rectangular portico topped by a triangular roof. The building has suffered the wear and tear of the millennia. Most of its marble covering has long been pried off, leaving a surface that is about as pockmarked as your average adolescent. The building itself is half covered by scaffolding and even through that it’s clear that the pieces don’t quite add up. The portico is about 4 feet too short. That wouldn’t be so bad except you can see on the rotunda where the portico’s peak is supposed to fit and the actual roof line well below that. There are a number of theories on this but it’s generally believed that when the columns arrived from Egypt they were a little smaller than the work order called for. (Cut it off twice and it’s still too short). The inscription across the top attributing the building to Marcus Agrippa isn’t accurate either. The Agrippa built structure burned down shortly after it was built and the replacement was struck by lightning and likewise burned. Hadrian (or maybe Trajean) had this one built and with uncharacteristic humility (you should the mausoleum he built for himself) gave the credit back to Agrippa.
So there are issues with the outside. Granted. But step inside and it’s another story. Truth be told, I was underwhelmed by the building when I first saw it. I didn’t know enough to get it. Part of the problem is that the building is so well preserved that it doesn’t look like it’s 1900 years old. All that broken stuff around over at the forum? That stuff looks old. Not this. Most say that it survived numerous sackings and the Dark Ages because it had been converted to a church. I like to think that when the Visigoths and Normans came through and wrecked the joint, they took one look at the Pantheon and said “Uh, this is really nice. We better leave this one alone.”
The marble floor is in a pattern of squares and circles of four colors representing the reaches of the empire (Egypt, Gaul, Asia Minor, and Carthage. There’s some green from Greece in the walls as well). There’s a slight angle to the floor as you move towards the wall to allow any water that comes in to drain away. It is a pantheon so the walls have a number of niches for tombs and memorials to some key historical and artistic figures. (The Agrippa built version was intended as a tribute to his friend and father-in-law Caesar Augustus but he declined the honor (Romans and their false modesty again) so it was mostly devoted to the deified Julius with statues of Augustus and Agrippa on the outside . Some think that Agrippa’s hubris was the source of the bad ju-ju that brought on those fires.)
The walls and floors are nice but the real attraction is the dome. The diameter of the rotunda is 43.3 meters and from floor to extrapolated ceiling it’s 43.3 meters. In other words, if you had a 43.3 meter ball and needed to put it someplace, this would be your best bet. The domed ceiling is made of chunks of stone and pottery and Roman concrete. (When I first arrived, I got so wonked out on this building that I actually e-mailed the author of a book on Roman concrete because I had some question. Amazingly he wrote back and not with any threat of a restraining order.) The dome has stood for 1900 years without any internal support. No rebar, no chicken wire, no nothing. Never been repeated. Never.
Finally (I know I’m going on a bit here), If you’re wondering why I referred to the ceiling as extrapolated a few lines ago, it’s because the ceiling is topped (or not topped) by the oculus, an opening which provides the only light in the building. If it’s a rainy day, it rains into the building. There are drains in the central tiles and as I said before there is a slight incline to the floor to send excess water to the sides where (I think) there are some additional drains. A friend of mine tells me that if you’re lucky and catch the building during a sun shower, you may be rewarded with a faint rainbow within the building.
As anyone who has spent any time here can tell you, Rome is a beautiful and frustrating city. For example, last week the power company came by the new apartment and shut off the power because the previous tenants hadn’t paid their bill. It took them two minutes to turn it off and two days to turn it back on. On top of that, there were other annoyances which, frankly, I can’t recall at the moment, but I finally decide the only reasonable thing to do was to go to the Pantheon. It was fairly packed, but I was able to find a seat on one of the handful of pews up by the altar and I sat…for a while and looked at the dome. It calmed me down. I suspect that if Goffin and King would have grown up in Rome, this would be their rooftop. Then the darnedest thing happened. A seagull drifted down through the oculus (That’ll send a shiver through your Catholic upbringing.) and started to fly laps around the dome. For about five minutes it just flew in circles. Then it slowly drifted back up towards the opening and was gone. Guess it was having a tough day too.