When they built the Pantheon around A.D. 125 the skilled builders of Rome applied advanced engineering to the Greek classical orders. "[28] Whatever the cause of the alteration of the inscription might have been, the new inscription reflects the fact that there was a change in the building's purpose.[29]. Two kings of Italy are buried in the Pantheon: Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I, as well as Umberto's Queen, Margherita. Finished by Hadrian but not claimed as one of his works, it used the text of the original inscription on the new façade (a common practice in Hadrian's rebuilding projects all over Rome; the only building on which Hadrian put his own name was the Temple to the Deified Trajan). It's not the Pantheon's facade facing the Italian piazza that makes this architecture iconic. Ziolkowski argues that Lanciani's initial assessment is still supported by all of the finds to date, including theirs; furthermore he expresses skepticism because the building they describe, "a single building composed of a huge pronaos and a circular cella of the same diameter, linked by a relatively narrow and very short passage (much thinner than the current intermediate block), has no known parallels in classical architecture and would go against everything we know of Roman design principles in general and of Augustan architecture in particular. It seems likely that the Pantheon and the Basilica of Neptune were Agrippa's sacra privata, not aedes publicae (public temples). The granite and marble columns were imported from Egypt, a land that was part of the Roman Empire. Since the Renaissance the Pantheon has been the site of several important burials. In 609 A.D. this temple was given by Emperor Foca to Pope Bonifacio IV and changed into a church, as it is looked in this ancient press of 1600 All other extant ancient domes were either designed with tie-rods, chains and banding or have been retrofitted with such devices to prevent collapse. In fact the pantheon was first built as a temple to all gods. L'iscrizione originale di dedica dell'edificio, riportata sulla successiva ricostruzione di epoca adrianea, recita: M•AGRIPPA•L•F•COS•TERTIVM•FECIT, ossia: ( LA ) « Marcus Agrippa, Lucii filius, consul tertium fecit » An empirical relationship gives a tensile strength of 1.47 MPa (213 psi) for this specimen. not "Aedes Panthei" (temple of all the gods). Although both were originally temples to gods, the Greek Parthenon temple, atop the Acropolis, was built hundreds of years before the Roman Pantheon temple. [49] These were thought to be a 15th-century replacement for the original, mainly because they were deemed by contemporary architects to be too small for the door frames. Hidden chambers engineered within the rotunda form a sophisticated structural system. Famous buildings modeled after the Pantheon in Rome include the U.S. Capitol, the Jefferson Memorial, and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Thomas Jefferson was a promoter of the Pantheon's architecture, incorporating it into his Charlottesville, Virginia home at Monticello, the Rotunda at the University of Virginia, and the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond. Although the dome is made of concrete, the walls are brick and concrete. The square located in front of the Pantheon is the Piazza della Rotonda. The Influential Architecture of the Pantheon in Rome. The Pantheon is a state property, managed by Italy's Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism through the Polo Museale del Lazio. "This work took a long time," Moore has written. Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) was one of the first architects to adapt the ancient design that we now call Classical. Titus Flavius Domitianus, (or, simply Domitian) became Rome's Emperor and rebuilt Agrippa's work, but it, too burned down in about A.D. 110. In full, it would read MARCUS AGRIPPA LUCII FILIUS CONSUL [ILLUD AEDIFICIUM] TERTIUM FECIT, which means Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius made [this temple] as third one when he was Consul. This refers to the confraternity of artists and musicians that was formed here by a 16th-century Canon of the church, Desiderio da Segni, to ensure that worship was maintained in the chapel. It has this name, perhaps because it received among the images which decorated it the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus; but my own opinion of the name is that, because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens. The architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White were well-known for their neoclassical buildings throughout the U.S. Their Rotunda-inspired domed library at Columbia University—the Low Memorial Library built in 1895—inspired another architect to build the Great Dome at MIT in 1916. "[12], Since the French Revolution, when the church of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris was deconsecrated and turned into the secular monument called the Panthéon of Paris, the generic term pantheon has sometimes been applied to other buildings in which illustrious dead are honoured or buried. There, they were transferred back onto barges and pulled up the Tiber River to Rome. ThoughtCo. [5] The square in front of the Pantheon is called Piazza della Rotonda. ), hat es gemacht, fecit. [69], The dome photographed with a fisheye lens in 2016, South east view of the Pantheon from Piazza della Minerva, 2006, The dome of the Pantheon seen from the hill of Janiculum, Tomb of King Victor Emmanuel II, "Father of his Country", As the best-preserved example of an Ancient Roman monumental building, the Pantheon has been enormously influential in Western architecture from at least the Renaissance on;[70] starting with Brunelleschi's 42-metre (138 ft) dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, completed in 1436. During storms, a drainage system below the floor handles the rain that falls through the oculus. While this building helped buttress the rotunda, there was no interior passage from one to the other. By the 7th century, the Pantheon had become St. Mary of the Martyrs, a Christian church. There are three memorial plaques in the floor, one conmmemorating a Gismonda written in the vernacular. It is also substantially larger than earlier domes. [71], Among the most notable versions are the church of Santa Maria Assunta (1664) in Ariccia by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which followed his work restoring the Roman original,[72] Belle Isle House (1774) in England and Thomas Jefferson's library at the University of Virginia, The Rotunda (1817–1826). Later on, the Pantheon was rebuilt by Hadrian during the year 125AD. Giuseppe Sacconi participated, but lost – he would later design the tomb of Umberto I in the opposite chapel. [72] Others include the Rotunda of Mosta in Malta (1833). On the vault are several 17th-century canvases, from left to right: Cumean Sibyl by Ludovico Gimignani; Moses by Francesco Rosa; Eternal Father by Giovanni Peruzzini; David by Luigi Garzi; and Eritrean Sibyl by Giovanni Andrea Carlone. The present arrangement is from 1811, designed by Antonio Muñoz. [29] It was commissioned by Raphael and made by Lorenzetto in 1524. In the Chapel of the Crucifixion, the Roman brick wall is visible in the niches. [27] How the building was actually used is not known. Its geometry has been measured and its building methods have been studied, as explained in this photographic tour. For more details, see our Privacy Policy. The tomb of King Umberto I and his wife Margherita di Savoia is in the next chapel. On the right wall is the canvas Emperor Phocas presenting the Pantheon to Pope Boniface IV (1750) by an unknown. The present high altars and the apses were commissioned by Pope Clement XI (1700–1721) and designed by Alessandro Specchi. [74], The portico-and-dome form of the Pantheon can be detected in many buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries; numerous government and public buildings, city halls, university buildings, and public libraries echo its structure. They also organize picket guards at the tombs. "[22], The only passages referring to the decoration of the Agrippan Pantheon written by an eyewitness are in Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Fecit. Professional engineers like David Moore have suggested that the Romans used corbeling techniques to construct the dome-like a series of smaller and smaller washers set upon each other. Holes marking the location of clamps that held the sculpture suggest that its design was likely an eagle within a wreath; ribbons extended from the wreath into the corners of the pediment.[42]. Lexington books, Toronto, 2007, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFCinti2007 (, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFWilson-Jones2000 (, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFRoss2000 (, Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, M[arcus] Aurelius Antoninus Pius Felix Aug[ustus], S. Apollinare alle Terme Neroniane-Alessandrine, National Institute of Honour Guards to the Royal Tombs, List of the oldest buildings in the world, "Nuova guida metodica di Roma e suoi contorni – Parte Terza ("New methodic guide to Rome and its suburbs – Third Part")", Another view of the interior by Panini (1735), Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna, "Pantheon, The ruins and excavations of ancient Rome", http://www.romanconcrete.com/docs/chapt01/chapt01.htm, "Hooping as an Ancient Remedy for Conservation of Large Masonry Domes", Official webpage from Vicariate of Rome website, Tomás García Salgado, "The geometry of the Pantheon's vault", Panoramic Virtual Tour inside the Pantheon, Roman Catholic ecclesiastical province of Rome, Boncompagni Ludovisi Decorative Art Museum, Museo Storico Nazionale dell'Arte Sanitaria, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pantheon,_Rome&oldid=1007989743, 2nd-century religious buildings and structures, Ancient Roman buildings and structures in Rome, Conversion of non-Christian religious buildings and structures into churches, Buildings converted to Catholic church buildings, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2016, Articles containing Italian-language text, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, High-resolution 360° Panoramas and Images of, This page was last edited on 21 February 2021, at 00:08. On 26 May 1929, this deaconry was suppressed to establish the Cardinal Deaconry of S. Apollinare alle Terme Neroniane-Alessandrine. [51] Finite element analysis of the structure by Mark and Hutchison[53] found a maximum tensile stress of only 0.128 MPa (18.5 psi) at the point where the dome joins the raised outer wall. In 1747, the broad frieze below the dome with its false windows was "restored," but bore little resemblance to the original. The Pantheon is in use as a Catholic church. On coins, the same words, "M. Agrippa L.f cos. tertium", were the ones used to refer to him after his death; consul tertium serving as "a sort of posthumous cognomen ex virtute, a remembrance of the fact that, of all the men of his generation apart from Augustus himself, he was the only one to hold the consulship thrice. Each zone of the interior, from floor to ceiling, is subdivided according to a different scheme. The first members were, among others, Antonio da Sangallo the younger, Jacopo Meneghino, Giovanni Mangone, Zuccari, Domenico Beccafumi, and Flaminio Vacca. His fiancée, Maria Bibbiena is buried to the right of his sarcophagus; she died before they could marry. The top of the rotunda wall features a series of brick relieving arches, visible on the outside and built into the mass of the brickwork. A templom egy korábbi, szintén Pantheon nevű templom helyére épült, amit Kr.e. Mark and Hutchison estimated that, if normal weight concrete had been used throughout, the stresses in the arch would have been some 80% greater. Ann Studs - Architecture Learn with flashcards, games, and more — for free. Manfredo Manfredi won the competition, and started work in 1885. [fotografia realizzata in occasione della prima uscita del pool Valle Giulia Flickr] The Pantheon is full of such devices – for example, there are relieving arches over the recesses inside – but all these arches were hidden by marble facing on the interior and possibly by stone revetment or stucco on the exterior. [52], No tensile test results are available on the concrete used in the Pantheon; however, Cowan discussed tests on ancient concrete from Roman ruins in Libya, which gave a compressive strength of 20 MPa (2,900 psi). The 4,535-tonne weight of the Roman concrete dome is concentrated on a ring of voussoirs 9.1 metres (30 ft) in diameter that form the oculus, while the downward thrust of the dome is carried by eight barrel vaults in the 6.4-metre-thick (21 ft) drum wall into eight piers. 19.10), but the current inscription could not be a copy of the original; it provides no information as to who Agrippa's foundation was dedicated to, and, in Ziolkowski's opinion, it was highly unlikely that in 25 BC Agrippa would have presented himself as "consul tertium." [57] These dimensions make more sense when expressed in ancient Roman units of measurement: The dome spans 150 Roman feet; the oculus is 30 Roman feet in diameter; the doorway is 40 Roman feet high. Even by the year 200, there was uncertainty about the origin of the building and its purpose: Agrippa finished the construction of the building called the Pantheon. For many, the answer is Marcus Agrippa’s inscription on the Pantheon: M AGRIPPA L F COS TERTIUM FECIT. The two plaques commemorate Maria Bibbiena and Annibale Carracci. Together with the fact that this unusual impressive masterpiece has survived over 1.800 years. Craven, Jackie. La prima cosa che colpisce del Pantheon di Roma è la grande iscrizione in latino con lettere di bronzo: M.Agrippa L.F.Cos. Archaeologists and historians debate which emperor and which architects designed the Pantheon we see today. (Consuls were the chief diplomats in Rome – … It is also said that the bronze was used by Bernini in creating his famous baldachin above the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica, but, according to at least one expert, the Pope's accounts state that about 90% of the bronze was used for the cannon, and that the bronze for the baldachin came from Venice. The frieze has allegorical representations of Generosity, by Eugenio Maccagnani, and Munificence, by Arnaldo Zocchi. [citation needed]. [16] The former would help explain how the building could have so easily lost its original name and purpose (Ziolkowski contends that it was originally the Temple of Mars in Campo)[17] in such a relatively short period of time.[18]. The first niche to the right of the entrance holds a Madonna of the Girdle and St Nicholas of Bari (1686) painted by an unknown artist. De Agostini Picture Library / Getty Images (cropped). [21], The form of Agrippa's Pantheon is debated. Mark Wilson Jones has attempted to explain the design adjustments carried out in relating the porch to the dome, arguing that the Pantheon's porch was originally designed for monolithic granite columns with shafts 50 Roman feet tall (weighing about 100 tonnes) and capitals 10 Roman feet tall in the Corinthian style. [55] This reduced the weight of the roof, as did the elimination of the apex by means of the oculus.[56]. Her argument is particularly interesting in light of Heilmeyer's argument that, based on stylistic evidence, Apollodorus of Damascus, Trajan's architect, was the obvious architect. The Pantheon (UK: /ˈpænθiən/, US: /-ɒn/;[1] Latin: Pantheum,[nb 1] from Greek Πάνθειον Pantheion, "[temple] of all the gods") is a former Roman temple, now a Catholic church (Basilica di Santa Maria ad Martyres or Basilica of St. Mary and the Martyrs), in Rome, Italy, on the site of an earlier temple commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD). From Roman Holiday in 1953 to Angels and Demons in 2009, films have featured the Pantheon as a ready-made movie set. As the height of the dome rises, the concrete was mixed with lighter and lighter stone material—the top is largely pumice. The dome features sunken panels (coffers), in five rings of 28. Vilket utskrivet blir: "M[arcus] Agrippa L[ucii] f[ilius] co[n]s[ul] tertium fecit", det vill säga "Marcus Agrippa, Lucius son, konsul för tredje gången, lät bygga detta".