The Pantheon is one of Rome’s most iconic monuments, perhaps second only to the Colosseum in its grandeur and fame.
As we find with so many structures from antiquity, the Pantheon’s pagan origins evolved into Christian appropriation and use over the ages. It is this evolution that deserves the credit for the Pantheon being one of the best-preserved buildings in Rome from ancient times; it was converted to a Catholic church in 608 and has been maintained as a place of worship ever since.
Keep reading to discover more fun facts! We’ve scoured a variety of sources to come up with an entertaining list. Buon divertimento!
Fun Facts About the Pantheon in Rome
The Pantheon’s Origins and History
- Over its 2,000 years of existence, the Pantheon has been a pagan temple, a Christian church, a shrine to two Italian kings, and the resting place of various artists, most notably Renaissance painter Rafael.
- According to popular belief, the Pantheon was a place where the Ancient Romans could worship their god of choice, a sort of smorgasbord-temple of divinities (as evidenced by its name, which comes from Greek and means “all the gods”), but scholars are now debating this, seeing as pagan gods were not keen to share their sacred space with other deities.
- The Latin inscription on the pediment says “Marcus Agrippa built this” but… he didn’t! The Pantheon we admire today was built by the Emperor Hadrian, who had the inscription placed on the pediment in homage to Agrippa. The first Pantheon, built by Agrippa a couple of centuries prior, burned to the ground.
- Not only did Agrippa’s original Pantheon burn to the ground, but so also did the second one! The Pantheon standing today is number three. Third time’s a charm, right?
- The Pantheon is a bona fide Catholic church and its name is the Basilica di Santa Maria ad Martyres (St. Mary and Martyrs).
The Columns and the Pantheon’s Portico
- The columns on the portico came from Egypt and weigh 60 tons EACH. Imagine that on your front porch!
- The gargantuan columns were dragged to Rome from the port of Ostia on rollers and hoisted into place by elephants.
- In the 17th Century, the bronze from the portico was removed and melted down to make eighty cannons for Castel Sant’Angelo.
The Dome of the Pantheon
- The dome of the Pantheon was the inspiration for Brunelleschi’s genius dome of the cathedral in Florence.
- Many experts have speculated on how the Pantheon’s mind-boggling dome was constructed, but no one really knows for sure.
- The walls supporting the dome are 6 meters thick. That’s almost 20 feet!
- The dome is the world’s largest concrete dome without reinforcement. Not bad after 2,000 years, eh? Those Romans knew how to make cement!
- If the dome were doubled to form a sphere inside the Pantheon it would perfectly fill the vertical space. In other words, the height of the interior is the same as the diameter of the dome (43.2 meters).
- There are twenty-eight coffers in each of the five rows of quadratic indentations decorating the dome (that you see in the banner image of this newsletter), and this quantity may very well not be random. In antiquity, the number 28 was considered one of the four “perfect” numbers — where the sum of its factors equals the number. Pythagoras believed that these perfect numbers (the others being 6, 496, and 8128) expressed harmony with the cosmos.
- This union with the cosmos can be further seen by the sun and the moon as they shine in through the oculus and travel across the elegant interior of the space. The seven niches lining the interior of the rotunda, which some say correspond to the seven celestial bodies that were known in Ancient Roman times, complete the cosmic story.
The Oculus of the Pantheon
- The oculus — the circular opening at the top of the dome — is huge, measuring 8.8 meters (29 feet) in diameter. You could lower a London double-decker bus through the oculus and it would have about 9 inches on either side to spare!
- When it rains outside, it rains inside the Pantheon. But not to worry, the sloping floor is the basis of a clever rainwater collection system with twenty-two camouflaged holes.
Whew! It’s a mouthful of facts but we hope you found them fun.
To fully geek-out on historical and structural facts about the Pantheon:
https://www.archeoroma.org/sites/pantheon/
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