Pantheon Audio Guide Tour

Temple of All the Gods, the largest and most complete building of ancient Rome to have come down to us, is a breathtaking experience. The huge concrete dome with its central oculus open to the sky represented a major engineering feat when it was constructed about ad 125. The date has been established from brickmakers’ marks on the bricks, as reliable a dating method as silversmiths’ markings in modern times.

Although the Pantheon seems a gloomy place inside take your time to examine what remains of the original decoration- a white marble cornice with a porphyry frieze. This was one of the key buildings of the ancient world and its influence upon European architecture has been immense.

The bold inscription on the pediment attributing the Pantheon to the Consul Marcus Agrippa (27 bc) is misleading. Agrippa’s Pantheon was destroyed by fire and rebuilt 1 50 years later by the Emperor Hadrian who modestly left the original inscription.

The pagan Pantheon became a Christian church in ad 608 when it was rededicated to all the martyrs of Christendom. Twenty eight cartloads of bones of early Christian martyrs were scooped up out of the catacombs and reburied under the fabric on the orders of Pope Boniface IV.

Later Popes and Emperors stripped the Pantheon of its fine gilded bronze roof and most of its interior marble decoration.

The great bronze doors are the originals. For centuries the Piazza was Rome’s fish market, then in the 19th century it became a bird market in the days before the Italians had shot most of their wildlife out of the sky.

The pagan gods having long been removed from the niches inside, the Pantheon was considered a suitable resting place for the first two kings of modern Italy- Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I. Several famous Renaissance artists including the ‘divine’ Raphael are also buried here.