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up at the Panthéon
This Cinestill 400d film has strange characteristics under varying available light. Redish halation on the left and an overall greenish cast. Image sooc.
Details best viewed in Original Size.
According to Wikipedia, the Pantheon was commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus as a temple to all the gods of ancient Rome, and rebuilt by the Emperor Hadrian about 126 AD. The building is circular with a portico of large granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment. A rectangular vestibule links the porch to the rotunda (seen here), which is under a coffered concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) 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, 142 feet (43.3 meters). It is one of the best-preserved of all Roman buildings. It has been in continuous use throughout its history, and 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".
This panorama was constructed using Photoshop CS6 to stitch together four images: two landscape oriented images horizontally and two landscape oriented images vertically.
I wasn't always lost in Rome. To get places I usually looked for landmarks. To walk to my daughter's apartment I took a short walk to the Pantheon. Then to Bernini's Elephant, past the gelato shop, book store, wine shop and leather shop. If I took a wrong turn or was distracted trying to get a particular photograph, I could usually find another way to get where I was going.
The Pantheon is one of Rome's iconic sights. A striking 2000-year-old temple (now a church), it is the city's best-preserved ancient monument and one of the most influential buildings in the Western world. The greying, pock-marked exterior might look its age, but inside it's a different story and it's an exhilarating experience to pass through its towering bronze doors and have your vision directed upwards to the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.
from: Lonely Planet
The Pantheon is a building in Rome, Italy, commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus (27 BC - 14 AD) and rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian about 126 AD.
The building is circular with a portico of large granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment. A rectangular vestibule links the porch to the rotunda, which is under a coffered concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) 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).
It is one of the best-preserved of all Ancient Roman buildings. It has been in continuous use throughout its history, and 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."The square in front of the Pantheon is called Piazza della Rotonda.
Source: Wikipedia
The original Pantheon was built in 27 BC-25 BC under the Roman Empire, during the third consulship of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, and his name is inscribed on the portico of the building. The inscription reads M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIUM·FECIT, "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, during his third consulate, built this". It was originally built with adjoining baths and water gardens.
Agrippa's Pantheon was destroyed along with other buildings in a fire in 80, and the current building dates from about 125, during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian[2], as date-stamps on the bricks reveal. It was totally reconstructed, with the text of the original inscription added to the new facade, a common practice in Hadrian's rebuilding projects all over Rome. Hadrian was a cosmopolitan emperor who travelled widely in the east and was a great admirer of Greek culture. He seems to have intended the Pantheon, a temple to all the gods, to be a kind of ecumenical or syncretist gesture to the subjects of the Roman Empire who did not worship the old gods of Rome, or who (as was increasingly the case) worshipped them under other names.
The building was later repaired by Septimius Severus and Caracalla in 202, for which there is another, smaller inscription.
This is the most impressive ancient building in Rome. Like the Colosseum, it was built of concrete, and has been in pretty much continuous use since it was put up by Hadrian (not Marcus Agrippa as the inscription indicates; he was responsible for an earlier building that burned in 80 AD). It started out as a temple and has been a Christian church since the seventh century, which saved it from being used as a quarry or worse as the Colosseum was. After the fall of Rome, the secret for making concrete was lost to the western world for a thousand years.
It is very difficult to photograph the interior satisfactorily, but I think I got lucky with this shot.