Pantheon Rome Tours

Most of Rome's ancient buildings are ruins you have to imagine back together. The Pantheon is the one you walk into whole, with its original roof still over your head. Here is what you are looking at.

A temple that never fell

The name in the frieze belongs to Marcus Agrippa, who built the first temple here under Augustus. It burned, was rebuilt by Domitian, burned again in AD 110, and the building you see went up under Hadrian, probably dedicated around AD 126. Hadrian put Agrippa's name back on the front instead of his own: M. Agrippa, son of Lucius, consul for the third time, made this.

What saved it was a gift. In 609 the Byzantine emperor Phocas handed it to Pope Boniface IV, who consecrated it on 13 May as Santa Maria ad Martyres. A church gets repaired; a pagan temple gets quarried. It still is a church, which is why Mass stops the sightseeing twice a week and why you cover your shoulders.

Under the oculus

The dome is 43.3 metres across, and the floor sits exactly 43.3 metres below the top: a perfect sphere would fit inside. Nearly 1,900 years on it is still the largest dome ever built in unreinforced concrete. The trick is in the mix: heavy stone near the base, lighter pumice near the top, and five rings of sunken coffers that cut the weight further. At the centre, the oculus is about 9 metres wide and open to the sky. Rain falls in and runs away through small holes in the gently domed floor, and on a sunny day a disc of light moves slowly around the walls like the hand of a clock.

Ticket, audio guide or guide?

Inside, the Pantheon is one round room, and you can see all of it in ten minutes. That is the case for the €7 ticket. The case for a guide is that the room only makes sense once someone explains it: why the floor is convex, where the bronze from the portico went (Pope Urban VIII melted it, and Romans joked that the Barberini did what the barbarians had not), and which niche holds Raphael. The $14 group tour is the cheapest way to get that. Small groups and private guides cost more and are quieter. An audio guide sits in between, if you are happy to listen through your own earphones.

Timing it

Go at 9:00 on a weekday and you will share the rotunda with a few dozen people instead of a few hundred. Around midday the light from the oculus is at its sharpest. Avoid Saturday from 16:00 and Sunday morning, when Mass closes it to visitors, and the first Sunday of the month unless you like queues. In August, one guest's advice is simply to bring water.

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