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AP®︎/College Art History
Course: AP®︎/College Art History > Unit 4
Lesson 5: Ancient Rome- Visualizing Imperial Rome
- Digging through time
- Pompeii: House of the Vettii
- Veristic Male Portrait
- Head of a Roman Patrician
- Augustus of Primaporta
- Augustus of Primaporta
- Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheater)
- Imperial fora
- Forum and Markets of Trajan
- The Forum of Trajan
- Markets of Trajan
- Column of Trajan
- The Pantheon
- The Pantheon
- Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus
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The Pantheon
The Pantheon, Rome, c. 125 Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Who else finds it sad that the engineering knowledge that produced this was lost for 1500 years in western culture?(75 votes)
- Because the only way of recording knowledge was by painstakingly handwriting it, there were very few copies, of the engineering genius built up over time, in writing. When The Library of Alexandria was burnt, it was the equivalent of the internet being destroyed forever. It was the advent of "The Dark Ages". (Just my understanding. No sources, so please correct me if you can source!) -Cheers!(40 votes)
- Anyone else get the words Parthenon and Pantheon mixed up?(53 votes)
- Parthenon comes from Greek the word "parthenos" or virgin, in honor of the goddess Athena. Pantheon comes from the Greek words "pan + theos" or of all - Gods.(49 votes)
- what did they do when it rained?(4 votes)
- "The oculus [open circular hole at the top of the dome] is 7.8 meters in diameter. Yes, rain and snow occasionally fall through it, but the floor is slanted and drains cleverly remove the water if it manages to hit the floor. In practice, rain seldom falls inside the dome."
http://goeurope.about.com/od/rome/a/pantheon.htm(20 votes)
- How did they clean the ceiling of cobwebs and dust?(6 votes)
- Scaffolding. I was at the Pantheon years ago when they were restoring the dome, and saw the scaffolding then.(6 votes)
- I believe that it was said in another video that the columns had come from egypt and I personally was wondering how they would do it?
I mean, how could they pull something like that off 1,300 to 1,400 years ago?(4 votes)- While Europeans (and probably Romans) used logs to move massive stones, the Egyptians didn't have the luxury of a lot of timber to make into rollers. Drawings from the villages near the Pyramids in Giza suggest that they used a layer of dampened clay between the stones and the surface they were moving it on. If you've worked with clay, you may have noticed how slick it gets when wet - this was almost certainly how they got the columns onto barges on the Egyptian end.(6 votes)
- I have a question what do they do when it rains? If it rains wouldn't mess up the inside. So how do they cover the hole?(3 votes)
- There are small drain holes in the center of the floor to collect water that enters through the oculus.(4 votes)
- What does "MAGRIPPALFCOSTERTLVMFECIT" mean?(3 votes)
- M. AGRIPPA L F COS TERTIVM FECIT = MARCVS AGRIPPA LUCI FILIUS CONSUL TERTIUM FECIT = "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, Consul for the third time, made [this temple]". This is the dedicatory inscription used on the Hadrianic Pantheon. We believe it copies directly the inscription from the original Pantheon which had been built by Marcus Agrippa, the lieutenant (and son-in-law) of Augustus. Read more here: https://www.academia.edu/9874002/Hadrian_and_the_Agrippa_Inscription_of_the_Pantheon(4 votes)
- It is often commented by scholars that the pediment is not the proper size for the dome. In fact you can see where it should be from the outside of the structure. Is it possible that because Hadrian rebuilt the pantheon, the original having been built by Marcus Agrippa, that the builders reused the parts of the original structure that survived?(4 votes)
- What does "reichstag" mean?(3 votes)
- Bundestag is a Berlin U-Bahn station located on the . The name of this station was changed in April 2006 from Reichstag to Bundestag after deputations from the Bundestag which sits in the Reichstag building(2 votes)
- thank you for answering my other question kathleen! i have some more questions about the drain in the video you showed me
1. was this put in by the romans in ancient times or by us?
2. where does the drain lead to? does it go to a gutter or underground somewhere?
Thanks!(2 votes)- It was put in by the Romans.
The drain probably just leads to a stream or something.(2 votes)
Video transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] DR. BETH HARRIS: We're
standing in the piazza, the square in front
of the Pantheon. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
This is the best preserved ancient
Roman monument. And yet, look at
the sense of age. Look at the weathering. Look at the way in
which its history is revealed through its surface. It's been attacked. Its original bronze fittings
have been ripped off. Look at the numerous
holes, for instance, in pediment, that tell of
all the different purposes that this building
has been put to. Originally a temple
to the gods, then sanctified and
made into a church. Now of course, it's also a
major tourist attraction. This is a building that has
had just a tremendously complex history. And you can see it
all over its surface. DR. BETH HARRIS: We're seeing
it very differently than anyone in antiquity would have seen it. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
In fact, we're standing many feet
higher than we would have been in
the ancient world. Rome accumulated elevation
from the debris of history. Once, you would have stepped up
to the porch of the Pantheon. Now, we actually lie downhill. DR. BETH HARRIS: And the
space in front of the Pantheon was framed by a colonnade. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: The colonnade
and the other buildings that would have
originally surrounded this building
would have obscured the barrel on the side, and so
that we would have only seen this very traditional
temple front. DR. BETH HARRIS: Exactly. It would have been
something very familiar. And the surprise
was what happened as you approached the threshold. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
I have to tell you that I'm absolutely in love
with those massive columns. They are supported by these
enormous marble bases. They rise up unarticulated,
without any fluting, and in these massive fragments
of what were originally marble Corinthian capitals. These are monoliths. They're single pieces of stone. Unlike Greek columns,
they were not segmented. They were not cut. And they were
imported from Egypt, which was symbolic
of Rome's power over most of the Mediterranean
under the emperor Hadrian, who was responsible for the
construction of this building. So let's go in. Let's go under the porch. Let's go through those
massive bronze doors. We just walked in under the
strictly rectilinear porch. And then the space opens up. DR. BETH HARRIS: Opens up
into this vast circular space. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: The
width of the building and the height of the
building completely fills my field of vision. And it is, in a
sense, an expression of the limits of my sight. Unlike a basilica, this
is a radial building. That is to say that it has
a central point and radiates outward from that central point. But what's fascinating
about this building is that it's not a
traditional radial structure, in that the point
would be on the floor. The central point--
its focus-- is midway between the floor
and the ceiling, and midway between its walls. It is large enough, and
geometrically perfect enough, to accommodate a perfect sphere. DR. BETH HARRIS: And,
as soon as you walk in, you notice that there's
a kind of obsession with circles, with
rectangles, with squares, with those kinds of
perfect geometrical shapes. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
This is a structure that is concerned with
the ideal geometries. But it also locates our place
within those geometries. DR. BETH HARRIS:
But the experience of being in this space
is anything but static. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: No, it's
really dynamic, in fact. One of the causes of that is if
we move our eye up the columns, you can see that
they're beautifully aligned with the
frieze of false windows that are just above them. But then all of that does
not align with the dome. DR. BETH HARRIS: That's right. They don't align
with the coffers that we see in the dome. What that does is
creates this feeling that the barrel that
the dome rests on is independent from
the dome, and almost makes it feel as if
the dome could rotate. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: That
complex visual relationship between the dome and the
decorative structures in the barrel remind us that the
actual structural system here is dependent on concrete, and
not these decorative columns that we see on the interior. DR. BETH HARRIS: Exactly. There's thick, thick
barrel of concrete that supports the dome. Because a dome
pushes down and out, Roman architects had
to think about how to support the weight
and pressure of the dome. And one of the things
that's doing that are the thick concrete
walls of the barrel. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
You know, the Romans had really perfected concrete. And this is one of the buildings
that shows what was possible. This is shaping space, because
concrete could be continuous. It could be built upward
continuously with wooden forms, which would then be removed and
then could open the space up in a way that post and lintel
architecture never could. DR. BETH HARRIS:
So concrete could be laid onto a wooden
support or mold, and could be shaped
in a way that you can't do with post and
lintel architecture. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
Well, what it does is it allows for this vast,
open, uninterrupted space. We walk into the space
and we feel freed. We are given a tremendous
amount of freedom in terms of how we move and
how we see through this space. DR. BETH HARRIS: Because of
the Roman use of concrete, the idea that architecture
could be something that shaped space and that
could have a different kind of relationship to the viewer. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It is even
now, in the 21st century, awesome. The emperor Hadrian,
under whose direction this building was constructed,
apparently loved the building and loved to actually have
visitors come to him here. One could imagine him
even in the back apse opposite the entrance. DR. BETH HARRIS: The
Pantheon originally contained sculptures of the
gods, of the deified emperors, we think. It really was about the divine. It was about the earthly sphere
meeting the heavenly sphere. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
And also in some way about human perception. Look how rich the surface is. DR. BETH HARRIS:
And there would've been much more in antiquity,
when the coffers probably had gilded rosettes. As we look at the drum,
we see colored marble. We see purples, and
oranges, and blues. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
Remember, these marbles are taken from around
the Roman Empire. So this is really an
expression of Hadrian's wealth and Hadrian's power. This is the empire being able
to reach across the globe to draw in these
precious materials. DR. BETH HARRIS: Perhaps
the most exciting part of this space is the oculus. Because it almost
seems to defy reason. How could there be a hole
in the center of that dome? It doesn't make sense. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Well,
it's the only light that comes into this space, with the
exception of some light wells in some of the recessed
areas, and of course, the grill just above the
door, and the door itself. There is one great window. And my students for years
have asked, is there glass? And of course, the answer is no. When it rains, the
floor gets wet. DR. BETH HARRIS: The perfect
circle of that oculus. The perfect circle of the dome. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: The oculus
is critical in the issues that you had raised before. This is a building
that in some way is a reflection of the
movement of the heavens. And what happens is light moves
into this space from the sun. It projects often a very
sharp circle on the dome, and moves across the
floor of the building as the sun moves across
the sky, and then eventually creeps up the
other side of the dome. And so this entire building
functions in some ways almost like a sundial. It makes visible the
movements of the heavens and makes them
manifest here on Earth. We've been talking
about this building as a great monument
of the ancient world. But it was admired and
copied in the Renaissance, and in fact is perhaps the
most influential building in architecture
in the Renaissance and in the modern era. I mean, think about all of
the different architects that have referenced this building. I'm looking down at the
floors and the geometry that you spoke of, the
circles and squares. And I'm thinking
about the pavement in front of the
Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue in New York. DR. BETH HARRIS: Actually,
once you know the Pantheon, you begin to see copies of it
and pieces of it everywhere. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It's true. The dome especially is perhaps
the most copied element, especially with the oculus. You can see that, for instance,
in the National Gallery in Washington. You can see it in almost
every Neoclassical building in Europe and North America. But before we leave, I'd
love to go and pay homage to Raphael, who's
buried just over there. [MUSIC PLAYING]