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Where in the world

Italy

Pantheon

Roman · Italy

Field notes

civilizations: Roman
types: Temple
built: 113 CE — 125 CE
occupied: 125 CE — 1,900 CE
country: Italy

The site

The best-preserved building of ancient Rome, rebuilt by Hadrian around AD 125 on Agrippa's earlier temple to 'all the gods'. Its portico of monolithic granite columns opens into a vast rotunda crowned by a coffered concrete dome 43 m across, lit only by a central oculus open to the sky — the largest unreinforced dome ever built, unsurpassed for over a thousand years. Consecrated as a church in 609, it thus escaped the spoliation that ruined most pagan temples, and shelters the tombs of Raphael and the kings of Italy.

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