![]() In the dome’s construction, the Romans probably used temporary wooden centering on which they layered concentric rings of masonry and concrete. They embedded empty clay jugs into the dome’s upper courses to further lighten the structure and facilitate the concrete’s curing. The Romans used the heaviest aggregate, mostly basalt, at the bottom and lighter materials, such as pumice, at the top. From there, the columns were barged up the Tiber.Įventually, work began on the concrete dome, constructed in tapering courses or steps that are thickest at the base (21 ft / 6.4 m) and thinnest at the oculus (7.5 ft / 2.3 m). Hadrian had these columns quarried at Mons Claudianus in Egypt’s eastern mountains, dragged on wooden sledges to the Nile, floated by barge to Alexandria, and put on vessels for a trip across the Mediterranean to the Roman port of Ostia. Each was 39 feet (11.9 m) tall, 5 feet (1.5 m) in diameter, and 66 tons (60 t) in weight. ![]() Just about everything had to come down the Tiber by boat, including the 16 gray granite columns Hadrian ordered for the Pantheon’s pronaos. Transportation presented another problem. The tamping packed the mortar, reduced the need for excess water, but, at the same time, stimulated bonding. They then tamped the mortar into the rock layer. They carried this mixture to the job site in baskets and poured it over a prepared layer of rock pieces. The ancients hand-mixed wet lime and volcanic ash in a mortar box, adding very little water so that they got a nearly dry composition. Vitruvius (circa 20 B.C.), a noted Roman architect, recorded the process followed in his day, that was probably still used by the Pantheon’s builders. Hadrian visualized himself enthroned directly under the Pantheon’s oculus - a near-deity around whom not only the Roman empire but the universe, the sun, and the heavens obediently revolved. The hours would make their round on that caissoned ceiling so carefully polished by Greek artisans the disk of daylight would rest suspended there like a shield of gold rain would form its clear pool on the pavement below, prayers would rise like smoke toward that void where we place the gods.” This temple, both open and mysteriously enclosed, was conceived as a solar quadrant. Hadrian said, “My intentions had been that this sanctuary of All Gods should reproduce the likeness of the terrestrial globe and of the stellar sphere…The cupola…revealed the sky through a great hole at the center, showing alternately dark and blue. At its top, the dome would have an oculus or eye, a circular opening, with a diameter of 30 feet (9.1 m), as its only light source. The rotunda’s internal geometry would create a perfect sphere since the height of the rotunda to the top of its dome would match its diameter: 142 feet (43 m). His plans called for a structure with three main parts: a pronaos or entrance portico, a circular domed rotunda or vault, and a connection between the two. It burned in the great fire of 80 A.D., was rebuilt by Emperor Domitian, but was struck by lightning and burned again in 110 A.D.īy 120 A.D., Hadrian began designing a Pantheon reminiscent of Greek temples and far more elaborate than anything Rome had yet seen. Most historians, however, claim that Emperor Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa built the first Pantheon in 27 B.C., a rectilinear, T-shaped structure, 144 feet by 66 feet (44 m × 20 m), with masonry walls and a pitched timber roof. They dedicated it to Romulus and some of his divine ancestors and, for centuries, held rites and processions there. The ancients constructed this first Pantheon after Romulus (753–716 B.C.), their mythological founder, ascended to heaven from that site. One legend says that the first Roman citizens built the original Pantheon on the very site where the current one still stands in the Campo Marzo - modern Rome’s business district. In truth, no one knows the Pantheon’s exact age. What’s even more surprising is that the Pantheon, in the splendor Michelangelo admired, still stands today - another 500 years after he saw it. But when Michelangelo first saw the Pantheon in the early 1500s, he proclaimed it of “angelic and not human design.” Surprisingly, at that point, this classic Roman temple, converted into a Christian church, was already more than 1350 years old. Michelangelo (1475–1564) looked at everything with an artist’s critical eye, and he was not easily impressed.
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