Pantheon

ROMAN PANTHEON
The Pantheon resides in Rome and is the best preserved of all Roman buildings and the oldest and arguably the most important building in the world.

It was originally built during 25 BC and 27 BC under the Roman Empire as a temple to the seven deities of the seven planets in the Roman state religion, with adjoining baths and water gardens. In 609 the Byzantine emperor Phocas gave the building to Pope Boniface IV, who reconsecrated it as a Christian church. It retains its name today as the Church of Mary and all the Martyr Saints (Santa Maria ad Martyres). As the building was kept as a Christian church it did not fall into abandonment as many of Romes ancient buildings did during the early medieval period. The marble interior and the great bronze doors have survived, although the latter have been restored several times. The only loss to the building has been the external sculptures.

Since the Renaissance the Roman Pantheon has been used as a tomb. Some of the people buried there are the painters Raphael and Annibale Caracci, the architect Baldassare Peruzzi and two kings of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I, as well as Vittorio Emanuele's Queen, Margherita. Although since 1946 Italy has been a republic, volunteer members of Italian monarchist organisations maintain a vigil over the royal tombs in the Pantheon. This has aroused protests from time to time from republicans, but the Catholic authorities allow the practice to continue, although the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage is in charge of the security and maintenance.

The Pantheon is a circular building with huge granite Corinthian columns housing the rotunda, under a concrete dome. The central opening known as the Great Eye opens to the sky and is intended to symbolize the heavens. The weight of the dome is concentrated on a ring of voussoirs, twenty seven feet in diameter which form the oculus. The dome is the largest surviving from antiquity and was the largest dome in western Europe until Brunelleschi's dome of the Duomo of Florence was completed in 1436. In the walls at the back of the portico were niches for statues of Caesar, Augustus and Agrippa. The large bronze doors to the cella, once plated with gold, still remain, but the gold has long since vanished.