The Pantheon
- nicolabarrett9
- Apr 11, 2020
- 1 min read
Italy has been in my thoughts over the last week and I'm hoping for happier times ahead for this beautiful country. Seeing as my page is about architecture and design I thought I would write about the Pantheon in Rome, one of my favourite buildings.
It has layers and layers of built history that span nearly 2000 years and can be found in the middle of a fairly typical piazza in Rome and one can just wander in, it’s free to visit. This monumental building has a most incredible coffered ceiling with a round opening (oculus) at it’s highest point.
The founding date of Rome was the 21st April 753BC, and it is on this day every year that the midday sun, via the oculus, strikes the metal grill above the doorway and illuminates the entrance area of the portico. It is said that the Pantheon is a giant sundial from pagan times but no one really knows what its original purpose was.
The building was converted to a Christian place of worship centuries ago and so now it’s potentially colourful history can only be hypothesised. Incredibly, until the mid-70s one could climb the pantheon and view the oculus from the roof.
Photo: Frank Baker Holmes
The discussion of the oculus in the Pantheon as a deliberate device for structuring illumination intrigued me especially the idea that light becomes an architectural material rather than a mere byproduct. The article’s emphasis on how the shifting beam marks both time and ritual space suggests a subtle choreography embedded in the building’s design. Midway through reading I was reminded of debates I have encountered through New Assignment Help Australia where structured environments are analysed for how they guide perception and behaviour. It made me wonder what might happen if contemporary public buildings revisited this notion of light as a temporal marker. Could such intentional design cultivate more reflective forms of social gathering or even reshape how we experience civic time…