Pantheon Columns: 120,000 pounds each of solid granite, brought all the way from Egypt

The Pantheon columns are just one part of the most famous site in Rome. Well, after the Colosseum. And the Roman Forum. And St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel. Of course, those aren’t technically in Rome, so they don’t count. But the Pantheon is definitely more famous than the Trevi Fountain.

Right? I hope I’m right.

The point is, the Pantheon is definitely famous — though maybe not as famous as it should be. People flock to Pompeii in search of preserved Roman ruins, but this is the most well-preserved site from the entire Roman Empire.

It also happens to be the Paul McCartney of buildings.

Tell Me Lies

So where do we start? We can’t go straight into the columns and just blow off the absolutely astounding architecture and engineering of this ancient structure.

Why not start with the words on the front?

M AGRIPPA L F COS TERTIUM FECIT

Meaning, “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, when consul for the third time, made this.”

Except…that’s a lie. He didn’t. This might be the most prominent lie in human history. Well, except for when a famous director once said “Jar-Jar is the key to all this.”

Marcus Agrippa built a previous temple that sat here. It was once thought to be a rather plain rectangular one, but recent research points to it being somewhat similar to what’s here now. Agrippa was pals with Augustus, and had the pld temple built as kind of a tribute to when they beat Egypt’s asses at the Battle of Actium.

If you aren’t familiar with Augustus, he was Julius Caesar’s nephew and the first Roman Emperor. He’s also the guy Mark Zuckerberg modeled his haircut after.

That temple burned down around 80 CE, and the Emperor Domitian had it rebuilt/reconstructed. Not too long afterwards, it got struck by lightning and caught fire again.

Rome and big fires go together like Jar-Jar and backlash.

So around 110 CE, the Emperor Trajan says he’s going to rebuild it. He dies, and the work carries on to Hadrian, who built what you see here. What we ended up with is an absolutely astounding structure, and Hadrian decided to pay tribute to Agrippa by putting up the words that still hang there today.

All the Gods, All the Lies

The word “Pantheon” comes from Ancient Greek, meaning it was a temple to all the gods. That was long thought to be its purpose — a temple to all gods.

But that may be yet another Binks-level lie.

No one from Roman times really explains what the building was for. They write about it and tell us how awesome it was, but as is often the case with ancient writers, they tend to take basic facts for granted. Here’s Livy, talking about a temple being dedicated:

”They said that one shrine could not be lawfully dedicated to two deities, because in case it were struck by lightning, or some other portent occurred in it, there would be a difficulty about the expiation, since it could not be known which deity was to be propitiated.”

Basically, he’s saying that you can’t dedicate a temple to more than one god, because if something bad happens, you need to know which god you pissed off. So who do we blame for the Pantheon’s double fires? No idea. Let’s go with George Lucas.

Another ancient historian named Cassius wrote specifically about the meaning of the name, and said he thought it had to do with the dome reflecting the shape of the heavens.

Some scholars now think it may have been dedicated to an Augustus cult, a spot where the mythical founder of Rome rose into heaven, or possibly a site where the connection between gods and emperors was reinforced:

“Check this out! Look at how awesome I am, hanging out and holding court in this totally badass building, with all these statues of the gods! Aren’t I just like them?”

That’s not an exact quote by anyone.

Volcanic Dome

So let’s get to the actual architecture itself, which is what I find most fascinating about it. As cool as the outside looks, that’s not the main attraction here.

The Pantheon had the largest dome in the world until the one at Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence was finished in the 1400’s.

How’d they do this? Concrete. And not just concrete — lots of different kinds. Near the bottom, they used heavier types. Near the center, the lightest kind possible, made of volcanic rock.

Concrete in general was absolutely vital to the structures we know so well as belonging to Ancient Rome. They’re what enabled the construction of vaults and arches, and…obviously…domes. Without concrete, there wouldn’t just have been no Pantheon, there also wouldn’t have been bridges or aqueducts or large baths or…well, pretty much anything.

I mean, they may have found ways to make some of these eventually, but not as easily or as efficiently as if they’d used concrete.

At the center is the “oculus,” a round hole that doesn’t just provide light to the interior, but leaves open the part of the dome that would’ve been the most difficult to construct.

To support all this weight, the walls of the Pantheon are 21 feet thick. Think about that for a second. That’s thicker than Mark Zuckerberg’s head.

The interior is also perfectly proportioned: the distance from the center of the floor to the top of the dome is precisely equal to the distance from one wall to the other. Meaning, a giant sphere would fit inside flawlessly.

Oh, and that oculus? Obviously it’s open to the outside — so the floor is slightly sloped downwards to the center, in order to let rainwater run down drains.

Pantheon Columns: The Biggest Sticks

So here we are: the Pantheon columns. Does anyone care about columns? I do. And you should too, because these are some incredibly badass columns.

Most columns from the ancient world are in segments, or “drums.” You stack them on top of one another, put some metal in the middle, and boom, you got yourself a column going.

The Pantheon columns aren’t made up of drums: They’re solid pieces of granite, 40 feet tall. Each one weighs around 60 TONS. That’s heavier than Mark Zuckerberg’s ego.

As if carving columns out of solid granite wasn’t hard enough, this granite came from two different quarries in Upper Egypt — meaning, way down south. They quarried them, waited until the Nile flooded, then floated them downriver to the Mediterranean.

They then brought them to the port of Ostia to the west of Rome, loaded them on more barges, and brought them down the Tiber River.

Now, how they got these columns to the Pantheon and stood them up seems to be a bit of a mystery. I’m going to say it was elephants. I have no evidence to back this up, but let’s just go with that. It was elephants.

It is important to note that not all of the Pantheon columns are from Egypt. Three of them over on the left were switched out in the 1600’s after being damaged. They got the replacements from other Ancient Roman structures.

Another important note: There’s an outline of a second pediment (the triangular piece on the front of the building), which is difficult to see from the ground. It’s believed the building was initially designed to have taller columns than the ones it ended up with.

Why? No one knows for sure. Some have suggested it was an accident, though I find it a bit hard to believe such a large mistake could’ve been made when we’re talking about a structure with such exacting engineering. I think the most likely reason is there was another, more important building that took the Pantheon’s original columns. One person suggested they were used for a temple to Trajan, as Hadrian was trying to tie himself to Trajan’s legacy.

I think it’s one of those questions we’ll never quite have an answer for. 

I Will Survive

So.

The most well-preserved structure from Ancient Rome, huh? That sounds like clickbait, and while such things are subjective, I don’t know what the other contenders could be.

What’s the reason for this? To put it simply: the Catholic Church.

It seems a bit odd to give them credit for anything when it comes to preservation, especially in Rome. After all, the church is the cause of a lot of deterioration in the city. As is the case with many ancient sites, old Roman buildings were often used as quarries. Parts of the current St. Peter’s Basilica were built using stone from the Colosseum.

I mean, why bother cutting new blocks when you’ve got some perfectly good old ones just laying around? Why would Mark Zuckerberg make his own version of facebook when someone else had already made one?

Just steal theirs.

It’s believed that in the 600’s CE, a Pope asked the Byzantine Emperor Phocas if the church could have the Pantheon. Phocas said “Ok sure, whatever,” and the rest is history.

The Pantheon became a church, and it’s still a church today. In a city surrounded by ruined bits of Ancient Rome, this structure remains more or less as it once did.

But not entirely.

There’s certainly been some changes. There were a few renovations done to the interior, and it’s believed that the coffered ceiling of the dome once contained bronze rosettes in the center of each one.

The exterior of the dome used to be covered in bronze, but in 660 CE this was removed. About a hundred years later, it was replaced with lead. Most metal from the ancient world didn’t survive, especially bronze.

A bell tower was added around the same time. It was later replaced by two bell towers in the 1800s, which looked completely stupid and were called the “donkey’s ears.” Thankfully they didn’t last long.

The pediment on the outside has a bunch of holes in it. Ancient temples always had sculptures here, and this was likely a giant eagle made of metal — I believe the guesswork on this is based on the pattern of the holes.

And most notably, the area of the roof beneath the portico — that’s the space the columns are holding up — used to be covered in bronze. Pope Urban VIII took it down and used it to build cannons. Notice I’m not just calling him “a Pope,” I’m using his name because he’s a huge dickhead. Although he did fund some awesome art by Bernini, he’s also the Pope who fought with Galileo.

His family name was Barberini, and there’s an old saying: “What the barbarians didn’t do, the Barberini did.” Meaning, they followed up on the destruction of Rome by doing more of the same.

Urban VIII apparently tried to tell people the bronze was actually for the famed baldachin in St. Peter’s Basilica, made by Bernini — but he’s a huge liar. They were totally for cannons. 

Sir Paul

Like everyone ripped off The Beatles, and the best Beatle Paul McCartney, so too did the Pantheon have a huge influence on later structures.

That’s not just an opinion, it’s fact. Scientists all across the world have confirmed with numerous peer-reviewed studies that Paul is indeed the best Beatle.

As I said before, Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence took the spot of the largest dome in the world when it was completed — and that dome’s construction was directly influenced by the Pantheon. We can also look at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello for another example. Or the Jefferson Memorial. There’s also a dome in the Vatican Museums that looks just like it.

We can even see the inspiration of the Pantheon on the inside of the dome of the US Capitol, albeit with a bizarre image of George Washington flying into heaven instead of an oculus.

If you’re ever in Rome, the Pantheon should be right near the top of your list of things to see — definitely above the Trevi Fountain. Tickets are cheap, and you can stand in a place that doesn’t look all that different than it did nearly two thousand years ago.

Unlike Jar-Jar, the Pantheon worked out.