Roman Pantheon (September 30, 2025)
Sometimes you walk inside and someone else’s reaction says it all.
That “Whoa! That’s even more incredible that I was expecting” look.
This is more or less the look that we all had when we first came across the outside of the Pantheon. We’re walking down busy streets of Rome and suddenly the you look past a few tour busses and you see it:
Spectacular view of the Roman Pantheon in all its glory
On more than one occasion, Violet has asked a very good question. “Why don’t we build anyting like this anymore?” She’s right. These kinds of structures are designed to humble you. As you stand before them, you can feel a deep sense of awe and wonder. “How did they do that?” Sure, they had pulleys and all sorts of technology, but that collum is a single piece of marble and weighs tons! The carvings are amazing and the attention to detail is incredible. And this is just the outside.
Upon entering the Pantheon, you realize what an incredible and sacred space this is. Sure, the religious focus has evolved over the years, but the design of the reverence has remained for millenia.
Leaning over our iPhone, we capture the opening in the roof dome
There are so many impressive features in this building. Like this dome is completely independent and has no outside support. The Pantheon's Roman concrete dome weighs approximately 5,000 tons (4,535 metric tons). This massive weight is supported by the dome's “opus caementicium” (i.e. Roman concrete) and the structure's robust design allows the downward thrust to be channeled into the supporting drum walls and piers without reinforcement. What? Seriously? Incredible!
Notice the subtle holes in the floor tiles to remove the rain water.
The next obvious question is, “What happens when it rains?” There’s this huge opening at the center of the building. The Romans, known for their aqueducts built an elaborate system to drain all the water out of the floors. If you aren’t looking for the holes, you likely won’t see them. We were so I took a picture of one to show how subtle they are. But I could put my finger in each of these holes so they are big enough to route the water even in a large storm.
And yes, over the years, the reason this Roman Pantheon has remained is that it was taken over by the Catholic Church. Where it originally started out as “Pan” (Greek and Roman for “All”) “Theo” (Greek and Roman for “Gods”). So this was the temple to all the gods until it was converted to a Catholic Church where it has remained to this day. They still say mass in it every Sunday.
I should also mention that outside the Pantheon is another Egyptian obelisk. It’s not that this is “more” impressive, just that my wife Elena looooves seeing the Egypt stuff here in Rome. Did I mention she can read some of the hieroglyphics? Not all of them, but many of them.
Framing the Egyptian obelisk in front of the Roman Pantheon
And as we were leaving, I kept being even more impressed with the outside of the Pantheon. The building looks great from all angles and has kept up it’s incredible shape all these year. So impressive.
The backside of the Pantheon shows more of the age of the structure
And as we walk to our next destination, we come across another obelisk. This one is tiny and is on top of a statue of an elephant. It seems to be about a Roman emperor, but we can’t be sure. Elena will look it up and see what she can find out about it later.
Now I know we’re not near the Vatican, so this next shop surprised us. Of course, priests and cardinals need to shop for their gear, but we’d always assumed that this was done privately or through back channels. It hadn’t occurred to us that there are retail stores you can wander into.
Nope. Not a word. Nothing to say here. Zip. Nada.
I’m stopping here before I say something in appropriate. Moving on.
Before reaching our next destination (one of the many Roman Museums), right next door there was a church with 122 steps in front of it. I was already playing the Rocky theme music and felt compelled to go up all of them. Just. Because. They. Were. There!
122 steps (I know because I counted them on the way up)
And I’m so glad that I took the trek up. It was a beautiful church and one that I’m sure only the very devout visit given the number of steps and lack of alternative means to visit. No elevators and no secret entrance you can travel to by car. This is how you get to this church as far as I could tell from inside the building.
Okay, ready for the Roman Museum next door. I debated to join this one with Elena. I’m not a huge fan of museums, but they can be helpful when seeking to see some of the ancient things in a city. This particular museum had more Christian paintings than Roman sculptures, but there was enough of the objects that Elena wanted to see.
I invite you to check out the scale of these artifacts. I used myself (and Elena) in these pictures to show scale. In the first picture, that’s me in the bottom left-hand corner. This painting is several stories high. I mean wow. In the next one, that foot is as big as I am. And so on. The Romans never did anything small. When they created stuff, they planned and executed big. Think big. Build big. Live large. I can see this pattern. I’ve enjoyed soaking all of this in with Elena and Violet this week.
