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A Night in Rome

Rome (Italy).

 

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The Pantheon (meaning "every god" in Greek) is a building in Rome, originally built by Marcus Agrippa as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome, and rebuilt in the early 2nd century AD. A near-contemporary writer, Cassius Dio, speculates that the name comes from the statues of many gods placed around the building, or from the resemblance of the dome to the heavens. Since the French Revolution, when the church of Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, was deconsecrated and turned into a secular monument, the Panthéon, the generic term pantheon may be applied to any building in which illustrious dead are honoured or buried.

 

The building is circular with a portico of three ranks of huge granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment opening into the rotunda, under a coffered, concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) open to the sky. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon's dome is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43.3 metres (142 ft). A rectangular structure links the portico with the rotunda. It is one of the best preserved of all Roman buildings. It has been in continuous use throughout its history. Since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a Roman Catholic church dedicated to "St. Mary and the Martyrs" but informally known as "Santa Maria Rotonda. [Text adapted from wikipedia]

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Copyright © Marcel Germain.

 

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Uploaded on August 21, 2009
Taken on August 1, 2009