The Pantheon: The Unbroken Dome of the Gods

Why is it significant?

Stand in the Piazza della Rotonda right before the sixteen colossal granite monolithic columns of the Pantheon's portico. Each column was quarried in Egypt and transported across the Mediterranean and up the Tiber River.

Key Facts

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Stand in the Piazza della Rotonda right before the sixteen colossal granite monolithic columns of the Pantheon's portico. Each column was quarried in Egypt and transported across the Mediterranean and up the Tiber River. Completed around one hundred and twenty-five AD under Emperor Hadrian, this temple dedicated to all gods is the best-preserved architectural masterpiece of the ancient world.

Step through the monumental bronze doors and look up into the cavernous rotunda: you are standing beneath the largest unreinforced concrete dome in human history, spanning forty-three point three meters in diameter. The interior is a perfect sphere: the height from the marble floor to the central oculus is exactly equal to its diameter.

Gaze up at the nine-meter-wide open oculus in the crown of the dome: it is the building's only light source. When it rains in Rome, rain pours straight through the open hole into the temple, draining silently through twenty-two tiny holes drilled into the convex marble floor beneath your shoes.

In the second chapel to the right rests the tomb of Renaissance master Raphael, who asked to be buried beneath this eternal dome. Exit east toward the church of Sant'Ignazio.