The Pantheon is one of the most awe inspiring and exceptional buildings the world has ever seen. Not only because it is nearly 2000 years old, or that it is the best preserved of any ancient Roman building. Not only because it is so incredibly unique or that the sheer size of its dome could not be equaled for over 1300 years after its construction. The true reason that the Pantheon is so undeniably remarkable is the history behind the building and the man who built it. The Pantheon has been in continuous use since the day it was built in 127AD and has inspired awe to anyone who passes through its momentous doors. Two of the greatest artists that ever lived took special interest in the building. Raphael asked specifically that he be buried in the Pantheon and Michelangelo, not easily impressed, called it, “of angelic and not human design.”
The dedication in the front of the Pantheon reads, “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, three times consol, built this.” However, the architectural design and construction techniques are well known to be too advanced for Agrippa’s time. Historians were confused for centuries. Even just 100 years after the construction of the Pantheon, the great historian Dio Cassius wrote that Agrippa had been built it. It wasn’t until the 1900’s that we discovered that Emperor Hadrian was the true builder of the Pantheon.
The answer lay in the bricks used in construction. Roman brickyards stamped their bricks with the names of government officials in power and other dateable information thus giving an accurate timetable for when the building was constructed. The stamps on the bricks used in the Pantheon date from the early 120’s, right at the beginning of Hadrian’s reign.
The Pantheon was rebuilt twice. The original was indeed constructed by Agrippa in 27BC, but it burned in a tremendous fire in 80AD. Domitian, who was emperor at this time, quickly rebuilt the Pantheon, which was subsequently struck by lightning and burned to the ground in 110AD. The final and most remarkable reconstruction took place under Hadrian and was completed in 127A.D. Hadrian’s Pantheon was very different from Agrippa’s original design and so much larger that Agrippa’s structure could nearly have fit inside the giant rotunda. However, the dedication to Agrippa was not an unusual phenomenon for Hadrian. In fact, Hadrian only put his name on one of the many monuments he constructed, the temple of his adopted father Trajan.
Hadrian was a man of many interests and talents. He was not only a soldier but also a
hunter, poet, painter, sculptor and a very adamant amateur architect. Upon coming to power Hadrian launched a massive building project all over the Rome. He traveled all over his empire and wherever he went was marked by the construction of bridges, roads, baths and other monuments. Hadrian rebuilt cities and constructed new ones during the massive building program that marked his reign.
Hadrian had a Greek education and did not attempt to hide his strong admiration for the Greek people. It was commonly rumored around Rome that he even favored the Greeks more than his did his own people. Hadrian also introduced the Greek fashion of wearing a beard. Up until this point emperors were clean-shaven, but Hadrian made the bread fashionable. He also had a very close relationship with a Greek boy named Antinous, whom he met in 124. Antinous traveled everywhere with the emperor until his mysterious drowning in the Nile. Hadrian, deeply saddened founded the Egyptian city Antinopolis and had Antinous deified, a tremendous and rare honor for someone who was not of the ruling family.
Hadrian was very different from his predecessor Trajan. Trajan worked his entire life on expanding the empire and had dreamt of marching on India as another Alexander. When Hadrian came to power, Rome ruled all of present-day Italy, Greece, Spain, France, England,
Turkey, as well as large parts of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and most of Egypt and Northern Africa. But he believed that Rome had reached such a size that it needed to shift its focus to security and self-sufficiency. He was very aware that over-expanding the empire would make it even more difficult to control and could lead to revolts, so he focused on peace and prosperity.
This new tactic did not sit comfortably with the Roman people who desired the glory of winning battles and gaining more power and influence. Disfavor grew as Hadrian’s Greek tastes were seen as un-Roman and unfitting for the leader of the empire. Hadrian was also known for spending a lot of time in the provinces which upset the people in the city of Rome who were used to having their emperor present and felt that they deserved more of his time.
As disapproval escalated, the legitimacy of Hadrian’s adoption by the previous emperor Trajan came into question. Hadrian was never officially named heir to the thrown by Trajan. It wasn’t until after the his death that Trajan’s wife came forward and announced that Trajan had wished Hadrian to be his successor. Four senators, whom were known for their closeness to Trajan, were soon after accused of plotting to kill Hadrian and put to death. Even though Hadrian was not in Rome at the time and claimed that he had not ordered their executions, the people of Rome still blamed him for the deaths of these popular and influential senators.
In 117 when Hadrian rode into Rome for the first time as emperor he was desperately pursuing a way to appease the people. Inspiration struck him when he found that a large area in the Campus Martius had been burned. The Campus Martius was a large public meeting area in the western part of the city that had included the Pantheon. Rome was already overcrowded with buildings and monuments and the burning of the Pantheon provided a great opportunity for Hadrian to give rise to an elaborate structure that would please the people, right in the center of Rome. The Pantheon, specifically, had been a temple to all the Roman gods, including deified emperors. Trajan, Hadrian’s father, had been deified after his death giving Hadrian additional motivation to reconstruct the Pantheon as an even grander structure than had come before it.
While it is not known who Hadrian’s chief architect was, it is very likely that Hadrian had a direct hand in the design of the Pantheon, particularly because he had an affinity for domed structures. It is likely that he employed a team of architects who hung on every word the emperor spoke. Apollodoris, the very successful chief architect for Trajan, would have likely retained his position if it were not for the fact that he had been spiteful to Hadrian in the past. Hadrian was once trying to display one of his designs to which Apollodoris dismissed saying, “Go away and draw your pumpkins. You know nothing of these matters.” Hadrian was so offended by this that when he came to power he had Apollodoris exiled and later put to death.
The Pantheon was built in two main parts: the porch and the rotunda but also included a large forecourt lined with pillars. The porch is built in the classical Roman style of monumental entrances: a triangular pediment supported by Corinthian columns with monolithic shafts of Egyptian granite centered on capitals and bases of white Greek marble. The rotunda, however, is architecturally in strong contrast to the porch. A thick drum rises from the floor before magnificently transforming into a colossal domed ceiling. Hadrian’s design was not only unlike Agrippa’s original Pantheon, which had been a traditional columnar temple of relatively small size, but it was also very radical for its time period. The idea of a domed building comes from Roman baths and palatial halls. Its use for a temple was a completely innovative idea. But Hadrian took it step further by combining a square porch with the circular rotunda. Putting the two together was unheard of in Rome at the time. The massive hemisphere top was built 142 feet in diameter, exactly the same as its height
off of the floor, thus it invokes the perfection of a sphere inside the building. No one had come close to building a dome of this magnitude before. The Romans would have been struck with inconceivable awe by this incredible building, which is exactly what Hadrian intended. The Pantheon was a revolutionary building for its time.
The large scale that the Pantheon’s design coupled with its originality posed extreme challenges to Hadrian and his architects. Several monumental architectural feats had to be recognized and overcome. The fact that the Pantheon has survived, entirely in tact, all of these years is due to the impeccable skill and understanding that went to solving these complex engineering problems.
To begin with the architects of the Pantheon had to deal with the nearby, ever flooding, Tiber River. Hadrian’s architects built a tremendous foundation to keep the massive structure from sinking into the muddy ground. To prevent water from rising up to floor level and doing internal damage, they built five steps leading up to the porch, common practice for a temple.
The next obstacle was to reduce the weight of the walls while still maintaining strength. The primary solution was to cut eight large bays into the drum of the building, which open into the center of the building. These cavities remove 25 percent of the weight of the wall directly. They also provide perfect spaces to place statues and other decoration. The secondary solution to minimize the wall’s weight was to alter the composition of the concrete. This was common practice throughout Rome when building large monuments. The concrete in the lowest section of the wall is comprised entirely of Basalt and Travertine; these are hard, sturdy and heavy rocks. As one moves toward the top of the drum the walls of the rotunda gradually use lighter materials until at the top it is made nearly entirely out of tufa, a porous volcanic rock.
The construction techniques employed then had to take a dramatic turn change to build the gigantic concrete dome. Brick walls had worked well to confine the rotunda’s walls during its erection but would not provide enough strength to shape a dome of this magnitude. Instead the workers employed a construction method known as flying centering. Massive wood beams, rested on the upper cornices of the rotunda, supported a mold that would hold the wet concrete. The dome was built slowly, in layers, as to prevent placing too much stress on the supporting wood beams at any given time. Similar weight lessening techniques were employed during the construction of the massive dome, as during the building of the rotunda. Cutouts known as coffers remove 5 percent of the weight of the dome. This number presents its functional significant when one realizes that the dome alone weighs in excess of 5,000 tons. The variation in the composition of concrete beings with brick fragments near the top of the rotunda and gradually shifts to pumice near the oculus.
There was also an unforeseen problem during the construction of the Pantheon that had to be dealt with by the architects. The original design called for 50-foot monolithic columns to support the pediment of the porch. Some say that when the columns arrived, Hadrian had them diverted to the temple of his father, Trajan, which was being constructed simultaneously near by. He must have seen this monument to Trajan as more important than the Pantheon.
Regardless of the reason, the only columns available at the time were 40 feet tall. Likely not wanting to upset the emperor by making him wait, they chose to lower the roof of the porch by 10 feet and use the immediately obtainable 40-foot columns. This last minute alteration can be seen if one looks at the side of the pantheon, roof tiles still remain in the rotunda where the top of the pediment was supposed to connect. The oculus, meaning “the eye” in Latin, has always been the centerpiece of the Pantheon. The hole at the very top of the structure is the only light source for the entire building. Light which comes from the heavens above with no interruptions and not from the bustling street of
man outside of the Pantheon. Measuring 30 feet across, the oculus spotlights a disk of light that beautifully slides around the room throughout the day, altering shadows and changing the entire appearance of the interior of the building. But Hadrian and his architects were not satisfied and added another useful element to the oculus’s light: time keeping. When the sun is at noon on either of the two equinoxes, and at no other time during the year, light from the oculus will strike the lower corners of the lowest coffers just above the door. At noon on the summer solstice the entrance way is completely flooded with light. This way the Roman calendar could be checked for accuracy by the steadfast light from the sun.
A hole in the ceiling also presents an obvious problem, what happens when it rains? The clever Romans had a solution for this as well, building a slight gradient into the floor. Thus when the rain hits the floor it is decanted into drains, which are connected to pipes that carry the water far away from the Pantheon. In this way the rain that does manage to fall through the roof does minimal damage to the structure.
In its prime the Pantheon was a stunning sight. The basic structure that we see today does not provide justice to what the people of ancient Rome would have seen. The entire porch
would have been covered in white marble veneers and topped with a polished gilded bronze ceiling. The rotunda would have been enveloped in stucco. The dome covered in massive bronze tiles would have reflected the sun’s light, making it appear as if the Pantheon were glowing throughout the day. As the temple to all of the gods, the Pantheon would have had numerous statues and decorations in their honor. Behind the gigantic Bronze door, in each coffer, would have been a bronze rosette, the finishing touch of the Pantheon’s splendor.
Hadrian was very fond of symbolism and he incorporated this into many of the monuments he built, including the Pantheon. The Pantheon was used to conduct some of Hadrian’s official government business. This had a two-fold effect. First, because the Pantheon was a public place, this allowed people of Rome to watch their emperor in action so they would know that he was working hard for them. But this was also part of the symbolism that Hadrian intended in his design. The dome symbolizes the heavens, which were seen by the Romans as hemispherical and because Hadrian conduced official business there the message was clear: the
empire was powerful and watched over by the gods. This symbolism can been seen throughout the Pantheon, the circle representing the heavens and the square representing the empire. From the circle of the rotunda and the square of the porch, to the internal bays alternating between square and cylindrical, all the way down the floor plan infused with circles and squares. Hadrian did not want this imagery to go unappreciated by his people. Unfortunately by 600 AD the Pantheon was well on its way to ruin. Emperor Constantine had moved the capitol out of Rome 270 years earlier with it took the funding for general maintenance and protection. The Pantheon was looted and used by the homeless for shelter. Pope Boniface IV came to the rescue when he saw the Pantheon’s potential and in 609 received permission to consecrate it as a Catholic Church named, “Santa Maria ad Martyres” or Saint Mary and the Martyrs. As a result he had to strip away all of the old decorations, however, without this move the Pantheon would likely have been reduced to rubble. Minimal maintenance provided by the Church kept the Pantheon in the condition we see it today. This year marks the Pantheon’s 1400th anniversary as a Christian Church. During the mid-1600’s the Barberini Pope Urban VIII felt that the beautiful bronze tiles could be put to better use within the Christian Church and removed them to build 80 cannon for the fortification of the Castel Sant’Angelo and construct the Baldacchino above the high altar at St. Peter’s Basilica. This travesty was called an act of vandalism and prompted the saying, “What the barbarians did not do, the Barberini did.”
When the Pantheon was completed in 127 AD it was like nothing that had come before it. The building brought great popularity to Hadrian’s reign by amazing the Roman citizen’s with its great size and incredible prowess. Throughout its nearly 2000-year history it has never failed to strike awe into the hearts of those who venture into its domed rotunda. The fortitude that this building has shown is inspiration to anyone who comes across it. The Pantheon remains as a continual reminder of Hadrian and his pioneering architectural concepts.
Works Cited
The Ancient Romans Builders of an Empire. By Joop Kampman. VHS. AIMS Multimedia, 2000.
Boatwright, Mary T. Hadrian and the City of Rome. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987.
Claridge, Amanda. An Oxford archaeological guide to Rome. Oxford: Oxford UP,
1998.
Dutemple, Lesley A. The Pantheon (Great Building Feats). New York: Lerner Group,
2002.
MacDonald, William L. The Pantheon Design, Meaning, and Progeny (Harvard Paperbacks). New York: Harvard UP, 1981.
Martines, Giangiacomo. "The Relationship Between Architecture and Mathematics in the Pantheon." Nexus Network Journal 2 (2000): 57-62. SpingerLink. University of Washington. Odegaard, Seattle. 31 May 2009. Keyword: Pantheon.
Scherer, Margaret R. Marvels of Ancient Rome. London: Phaidon P, 1955.
Sear, Frank. Roman Architecture. Ithaca: Cornell UP (Cornell Paperbacks), 1982.
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