Pilgrimage series:
Pantheon is best preserved building

Editor's note: Twelfth in a series on the sacred places and tombs of saints included in The Compass pilgrimage to Rome and Paris that retired Green Bay Bishop Robert Banks will lead May 3-13. (More information on pilgrimage)

By Tony Staley

	The Pantheon What: Originally a temple, now the Church of St. Mary of the Martyrs, known for its large dome When: Built 125 AD, consecrated as a church in 609 Where: Rome

The fourth day of touring in Italy, the pilgrims will go to the Pantheon in Rome.

The Pantheon, a nearly 2,000-year-old Roman building and architectural wonder, was erected as a Temple of all the gods. It was consecrated in the early 7th century as St. Mary of the Martyrs Catholic Church.

The Pantheon has been used continuously since its construction. It is the best preserved building of ancient Rome and possibly is the world's best preserved building of its age.

While it is not clear who designed the Pantheon, most accounts credit either Emperor Trajan's favorite architect, Apollodorus of Damascus, or Emperor Hadrian, Trajan's adopted son and successor. While it's thought that the Pantheon was built as a general place of worship, there's no record of how it was used.

The enormous dome is the building's most notable feature. At 142 feet in diameter, the 5,000-ton dome was the largest in the world for more than 1,000 years and still ranks as the largest unreinforced concrete dome.

The dome ranges in thickness from 21-feet at the base to four-feet around the oculus or eye, a completely open area at the center. The weight is supported by eight barrel vaults on 21-foot-thick drum walls resting on eight piers on the marshy land.

It is thought that the dome was designed so that from the inside it would look like the heavens. When Michelangelo first saw the Pantheon in the early 1500s he remarked that it was of "angelic and not human design."

In 609, the Byzantine emperor Phocas gave the building to Pope Boniface IV, who converted it into a church. It is especially popular on holy days and for weddings. At the end of Mass on Pentecost, Roman firefighters drop red rose petals through the oculus onto the congregation below.

Becoming a church saved the Pantheon during the early middle ages from the ruin other buildings in ancient Rome experienced.

Even at that, Paul the Deacon wrote how in July 663 Emperor Constans II spent 12 days in Rome pulling all the metal off the old buildings, including stripping the Pantheon roof of its bronze tiles and other ornaments, which he sent to Constantinople.

Exterior marble was removed later, some of which is in the British Museum. Some sculptures also were taken, but the marble interior and great bronze doors survived.

Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644) even ordered the bronze ceiling from the Pantheon's portico melted down to make canons to fortify Castel Sant'Angelo.

The interior includes many fine paintings of religious art, including the Annunciation by Melozzo da Forli, St. Lawrence and St. Agnes by Clement Maioli and the Incredulity of St. Thomas by Pietro Paolo Bonzi.

Several painters, including Raphael and Annibale Caracci, and the architect Baldassare Peruzzi, are buried at the Pantheon, as are King Victor Emmanuel II, King Umberto I and his wife Margherita di Savoia.

(Staley is a retired editor of The Compass.)

Next: Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Rome