Virtual Rome: What Did The Pantheon Look Like?

we are so used to the megastructures of the 21st century to the skyscrapers of dozens of levels to impressive works of engineering and yet sometimes just walking into a building that was built 2 000 years ago can make our jaws drop for that's what the pantheon does the most famous the most iconic the most important of all roman temples is a pantheon he has a huge inscription in the freeze that empty pediment that perfectly ordinary colonnade on the front and that shape characteristic for roman temples that is the first thing you notice about the building and it was the first thing that the ancient romans also noticed which made him believe that when they entered they were entering a conventional temple like the other temples in their city but once they walked through the enormous bronze doors they were amazed the exterior of the building was designed to prepare you for something as different as possible from the interior and when you came in you entered a space that was simply overwhelming [Applause] in the front we have 16 huge columns all made of one piece something quite unusual since they were generally made of several pieces these were granite bread from egypt they were necessary to support the enormous weight of the pediment of this temple the double pediment is due to the fact that combs were originally going to be taller but they had problems transporting them and so they put the current ones 44 roman feet the reconstruction that we have of the image in the pediment is generally that of a crowned eagle that was a sacred symbol for the romans the eagle associated with god jupiter and the crown with the deified emperors so this is no coincidence if we get a little closer we can see how massive these columns are in the space of the portico which by itself could be a temple [Music] on the ceiling we see this wooden structure with beams and marble arches when reading all descriptions of this work we discovered that wooden structure was originally made of solid bronze in the 17th century was replaced with wood to use the bronze to make the baller king for st peter's basilica to understand the shape of the pantheon we must know that it takes two different types of temples and transforms them looking at the planet of the pantheon you can realize how much you can manipulate the thickness of the wall all these small subtracted spaces are niches in the world that make it possible to have altars and statues and this is necessary because the architectural program of the pantheon is different from that of most temples in greek pan means everything and theon means god that is to say pantheon all the gods so if a typical temple needs to have an altar for god the pantheon the temple of all gods needs to have many altars or at least it needs to somehow symbolize this connection with the cosmos in a more inclusive way than a typical temple and it does this in a number of ways firstly it is important to talk about these niches when we talk about vaults we talk about these arches that push the loads to the sides and that is why they require a thick wall to contain the weight the pantheon complies with this because it is a very thick wall but what happens when you start carving these niches inside the wall doesn't it undermine the solidity of the wall in their desire to create spaces for the altars of the gods are they compromising the stability of their structure what it does is it grenades the surface something similar to what corrugated cardboard does corrugated cardboard is very rigid because the curvature of its surface makes itself brazing the curvature of its geometry becomes part of the structure stone columns are not that useful here because if you push a column it fails arches are much more stable because they distribute the loads to the sides so by cutting heart-shaped niches it becomes a sort of corrugation and even inside the wall where we cannot even see they also left cavities to take advantage of this notion that certain geometries can improve the rigidity of the structure so the pantheon is a sort of hybrid and if you compare it to something like the temple of fortuna viriles you can see how it can be hybrid fortunate realize it's all about one thing you can see the cella surrounded by a wall and the columns that create a portico and it's frontal so how does a pantheon have these forms well it has a portico and it has a cilla but it is putting together two very different conditions and it brings them together in a way that it doesn't even try to hide what's more it's putting together three different conditions here's the front of a building it is the same as the temple of fortuna verily it's only bigger here's a large rectangular block that is this great massive material that is put to allow these two irreconcilable geometries to be together and then you go inside and you have this giant space with a dome when you think about the pantheon or any building for that matter and you try to do an analysis of a building try to look for the strangest parts your analysis becomes better when you focus on these parts if you were doing an essay on the pantheon and you said it's all about a circle that's boring you wouldn't have observed deep enough but something about the union of these three elements the temple the huge block of stone and the cylinder it becomes very interesting pantheon the temple of all gods this is the urban planning diagram of the romans and when you see the dome of a pantheon it seems as though you're seeing this image represented and this has a double meaning in plan we have the circle but we also have the circle and section the space of the pantheon is a spherical and in the upper part we have innocuous which means i the oculus is inspiring it is the only light that enters the pantheon in addition to the one that enters through the door it rains through it and the water evaporates through it but it is one of the characteristics that a pantheon has that experience of connection with nature and you might say how is it possible to put a hole in the center of the dome wouldn't this destabilize the structure of the dome but the logic of building a dome and you can see this kind of steps here it has to do with the stacking and compression of rings it's like building an arch but sideways so each of these compressing rings of stone becomes self-stabilizing they lock together gravity holds them together and you can see more or less how they work because they are much thicker in the part where the dome begins and as they get closer to the oculus everything becomes thinner and if the architects have wanted to continue building they probably could have but it was not necessary because it stabilizes that way and the oculus is a source of light the idea that it is a circle or rather that it is a spherical space is full of meaning because the romans took a lot from the culture and philosophy of ancient greeks and this is probably why romans were so successful in the conquest of foreign lands because they gave people fresh water bridges and roads and because they allowed the cultures to continue their own traditions and they took the best aspects of those traditions and with the greeks it took a lot of their architecture and their philosophy in the cosmology of the greeks described by plato in one of his books called timaeus the cosmos are spherical the heavens are spherical different geometrical shapes adhere very closely to different important elements earth is rectilinear it is a square the cosmos are a circle and putting these two irreconcilable geometries together makes visible the reconciliation of the earth with the heavens in a certain way and when you're inside the space looking up at the great circle of light that comes from the oculus this notion of connection with the heavens becomes subjectively something you can experience it is as if there were another axis introduced into space not only the x-axis or the y-axis but a vertical axis an axis towards the sky which is called axis mundi the axis of the world and this obsession with circles and squares is not only in the volume of the space but also in the pavement in the coffers of the ceiling and in the marble of the walls the elaboration and the articulation of the dome of the pantheon seems to be cheating in terms of its thickness and of its presence of material you would think that you might want to have this as thick as possible because then it would be more solid but in reality what you want is to have the least weight possible because that way the load of the weight is less for the walls so one of the design tasks is to reduce the weight of the dome and to reduce the weight without reducing its rigidity the coffers are made geometries that just like corrugated cardboard stiffen the structure and as the dome becomes thinner and lighter as the coffers go up the coffers also get smaller and this gives the illusion that the dome is even higher than it really is because this element that you think is only one size continues to reappear and diminish in size like perspective so it's a very smart building what made this building possible was of course the use of concrete that was invented by the romans and not only that but also the use of many types and many diverse mixtures of this concrete the engineering was brilliant making the weight of the concrete itself lessen as the height rises based on the aggregate the bronze doors are original from the roman period they are large and they allow us to begin to see the interior polygrammy of the pantheon and from the moment we enter we can already perceive the volume and the space of a pantheon you immediately realize that the building is not static at all but dynamic it is full of movement especially because everything that lines up in the walls that is the niches the columns the windows does not line up at all with the coffers on the dome this creates a feeling that the dome is a completely independent element from the barrel on which it rests most of the interior marble is original as are the approximately 10 meter high columns each one of the niches had a statue of a god and that large niche at the end is where the emperor hadrian would have received people so in addition to a divine temple the pantheon had public meetings in which the emperor spoke with people when entering the pantheon you will always find the light of the oculus hitting a different spot but during the year there are key dates in which you will find the sunlight hitting certain specific parts for example on the longest day of the year the oculus will be projected exactly on the center of the floor there are also other dates such as april 21st the anniversary of rome the door of a pantheon is the one that receives the projection of the oculus so you receive it when you enter here's an example of the light hitting on the longest day of the year june 21st where you can see the intensity of the light hitting the pavement while the rest is dark a unique experience that you can see some days of the year you can have a great appreciation of colors that tell us something purple was a color of royalty because it was the most expensive pigment and it reaffirms the divine status of the emperor in the dome we can see the coffers which are actually covered with modern stuco but under the stuka there are holes in the center of each coffer that indicate that each one had a reset or a bronze panel it is not known exactly it is incredible to think that the interior lamentation of the pantheon is only a fraction of what it was in ancient times on each side of the axis door there's a large niche agrippa the original architect wanted to put inside a statue of the current emperor augustus but augustus did not feel worthy to be inside so agrippa decides to put a statue of himself and one of augustus in the exterior niches of the temple and this makes sense because if you turn to the opposite side of the pantheon 800 meters north you would be seeing the entrance to the mausoleum of augustus where he would be buried this is the inscription that recognizes the original architect marcus agrippa luki filius consulter marcus agrippa senator lucius made this during his third consul actually the pantheon of aripa burned down twice and the one we know today was built by the emperor hadrian in the year 125. this is a model of how the pantheon would have been in roman times there would be a square in the front and in the back it would have been packed very tightly because a characteristic of roman urban space is a figure of void in ancient greece the buildings were the figures in space while in rome it's all about the space that the buildings form so even when you have something like a cylindrical building that screams about its figurality you think that it must be completely impossible not to see a building like this when walking through the city the fact is that it was packed in tight and the things that you clearly experienced its shapes were the voids that is the squares the courtyards the forums in front of the buildings this is roman space on the day of pentecost it is a roman tradition to throw rose petals through the oculus of the pantheon a visually extraordinary experience in the year 608 emperor focus declared the roman pantheon as a christian church and since then it has been the most visited site in italy the pantheon was copied in the renaissance and the baroque and in almost every neoclassical building the pantheon is perhaps the most influential building in history both renaissance and modern if you think of all the modern architects who take this building as a reference you will realize that the influence of the pantheon is about everywhere thanks everybody for watching the video until the end i hope you enjoyed it i hope you learned something and if you want me to keep translating my videos into english like this video and definitely let me know in the comment section below also don't forget to follow me on facebook and instagram and uh yeah thanks for watching goodbye [Music] you

Channel: Manuel Bravo

Views: 258,374

Rating: 4.9030657 out of 5

Keywords: pantheon, rome, roman, roman pantheon, the pantheon, italy, dome, architecture, art, classical architecture, roman architecture, classical, architect, temple, ancient, ancient rome, roman empire, empire, cupula, cupola, roma, italia, imperio romano, impero romano, panteon, panteon romano, architettura, arquitectura, architetto, arquitecto, concrete, concreto, the orders, history, architecture history, art history, roman history, rome history, historia, roma antigua, roma antica, building, old building

Id: JW5-7qGPl6U

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021