This remarkable building of the ancient era on the Piazza della Rotonda in Rome is known to any educated person. It was once considered the main Roman temple, where the statues of Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn stood. “Pantheon” is translated from Latin and means “temple of all gods”.
The first Pantheon was built in 27 BC, in the third consulate of Marcus Agrippa, son-in-law of Emperor Octavian. It is usually thought that the building was erected by order of the emperor, but this is not so. The land on the Champ de Mars belonged to the city and was considered city-wide property, but the site nearby, on which construction was carried out, was owned by Agrippa himself.
First option
On his personal initiative and on his money, in 29 BC, in commemoration of the victory of the emperor at Cape Shares over the army of Antony and Cleopatra, which happened two years earlier, large-scale work began here. For 10 years, Agrippa erected three buildings - Thermae, which later received his name, the Basilica of Neptune and the Pantheon. Moreover, we do not know exactly which Roman gods the first Pantheon was dedicated to. But some researchers think that it was not the temple of all the gods at all, but the temple of Mars. If we correlate the construction of two sanctuaries with the victory over the enemies, then it is likely that the consul "thanked" the god of war Mars and the god of the sea Neptune. After all, it was Agrippa who led the military operations against Antony and Cleopatra and released high-speed liburns against the clumsy enemy triremes, which defeated the Egyptian fleet.
The first Pantheon, which was hardly called the Pantheon, differed little from similar Roman temples. It was rectangular in shape, elongated more in width than in length, had a portico with columns, brick walls, decorations in the form of marble caryatids and statues, and a gable wooden roof. This structure stood for over a hundred years and was destroyed during the reign of Emperor Domitian, during a major city fire in 80. From him there was only a portico with columns, where a commemorative inscription is installed - "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, elected consul for the third time, erected this." “It” does not refer to the entire modern building, but only to its preserved part.
The second Pantheon was erected on the site of the burnt one, adding the missing parts to the portico. But fires in Rome were commonplace, and the second Pantheon burned down in 110. Four years later, under Emperor Trajan, construction work began again. Although the name of the architect is not mentioned anywhere, experts believe that the Pantheon was rebuilt by Apollodorus of Damascus, Trajan's favorite.
Promotional video:
Mastery against time
The architect Apollodorus had a lot of work ahead of him. The emperor wanted to see a huge "eternal" temple on the site of the burned down. It had to be built so that it was timeless. All to the same facade with a portico Apollodorus added a small intermediate building and a rotunda. At the same time, the portico received a new look - it was equipped with 16 gray granite columns brought from Egypt. Each was almost 12 meters high, spanning one and a half meters and weighing 60 tons. The quarry and the place of loading onto ships were separated by 100 kilometers. So the cunning Romans used the time-tested method - they dragged these colossus on wooden sleds. And then they were floated on barges along the Nile to the seaport. From there they were transported through the Mediterranean Sea to Ostia, again loaded onto barges and raised upstream to Rome itself. The last 600 meters to the construction site, the columns were moved on wheeled carts.
But these difficulties were nothing compared to the construction of the rotunda. The walls of the rotunda were supposed to support an incredible dome. The Romans knew how to build domed buildings, but they were all smaller in size. Probably the prototype of the Pantheon for Apollodorus was the so-called "Golden House" of Nero, destroyed in a fire in 64 years. The architect was involved in the demolition of the ruins of this building. He planned to build the Rotunda of the Pantheon with a huge hemispherical dome partly of brick, partly of concrete. Since the dome was supposed to rest only on the walls, leaving the interior space completely hollow, he made the walls as thick as possible - six meters - and without windows. And the dome was designed so that its weight would not ruin the entire structure.
As a result, the Pantheon received the world's largest dome made of unreinforced concrete. Its thickness in the places of support on the walls reaches the same six meters, but as it moves towards the center, where there are no supports, the thickness of the dome decreases to 1.2 meters. In addition, to lighten the weight of the dome, its inner surface has many recesses (the so-called caissons) - five rows of 28 pieces each, and in the center there is a round hole - the oculus - with a diameter of nine meters, which serves both for lighting the room and for ventilation … If the architect had not made such a hole in the structure, the dome of the Pantheon would certainly have collapsed under its own weight. The ratio of the height of the walls of the rotunda together with the dome and the diameter of the rotunda is also important - they are equal (43.3 meters). In other words, a rotunda with a dome has a shape tending to a cube,and this is the most stable form. The pressure of the dome on the walls at these dimensions is minimized.
According to the legend, the dome of the rotunda was erected by the method of systematic filling of the earth. After the completion of construction, the land was removed. And a little trick allowed to carry out such a titanic work completely free of charge. The Romans were told that the ground inside the rotunda was mixed with gold coins. Of course, everyone who could rushed to rake the gold-bearing land.
In 126, already under the emperor Hadrian, the work was completed.
Change of milestones
The emperor wanted a building that would glorify him for centuries. And he received such a masterpiece. The Pantheon has become a kind of wonder of the world. It was richly decorated inside. The dome was not only beautifully structured, but also equipped with bronze rosettes and stars. The marble floors formed a pattern with geometric elements. In the niches stood marble statues of gods and goddesses. On April 21, the emperor himself came to the temple, and the light from the oculus flooded his figure on the dais, just like the statues of the gods. It was a remarkably beautiful pagan temple. He remained as such until the fall of the Roman Empire and the introduction of a new religion in Europe - Christianity. It was sometimes renovated, and once, in 202, it was thoroughly renovated.
Several centuries later, after Christianity became the official faith, the Byzantine emperor Phoca presented the Pantheon to Pope Boniface IV. Indeed, why should the good be lost? The Pantheon of all the gods turned out to be an excellent Christian church of St. Mary and the Martyrs. It was consecrated on May 13, 609. For four centuries, the Pantheon has slightly dilapidated, and renovations were also carried out before the consecration.
They pulled the pagan gods out of the niches, shook out all the pagan dirt, that is, got rid of the demons. They replaced them with the relics of the holy martyrs, transferred here from the catacombs.
The next emperor 30 years later tore off the bronze roof from the temple and some of the decorations that the clergy did not get to. The roof was restored only a century later, but it was already made not of bronze, but of lead.
However, subsequent popes now and then returned to plunder the pagan heritage. Pope Urban VIII Barberini, who lived in the 17th century, tore off the bronze facing of the portico, and the imperial eagles, and the bronze inscriptions on the portico. And he sent the bronze to melt. Daddy needed guns. It was not for nothing that contemporaries joked evil about this: they say, what the barbarians did not do, Barberini did. Several times they tried to rebuild the Pantheon - they added to it either a medieval bell tower, or turrets above the portico, or an altar, or an apse, or a choir or an organ. The turrets and the bell tower, fortunately, were demolished. But the Christian reconstruction inside the Pantheon remained.
Today it is the active and most visited Roman temple. And also a tomb. The artist Raphael, the Italian kings Victor Emmanuel II and Umberto I, Queen Margherita of Savoy, the composer Corelli, the diplomat Consalvi and other famous people are buried here.
Elena FILIPPOVA