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Divo Adriano
Pantheon
Pantheon architecture
Pantheon: (Italian) bibliography
Pantheon: the dome
Poseidonion
Pantheon, restaurations
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Seventy years after the first inauguration, the Pantheon seemed already to need serious restorations and this is proved by an inscription on two lines under the Adrian's one placed there by the emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla, which says : "They restored to the cult, damaged by ancientness". And these were not the only ones up to now. Between Augustus and Adrian two other emperors had done their best for the condition of the monument, Domitian and Trajan, and last Antonius Pius, thanks to whom, it is believed, that the work left unfinished by Adrian, were finished. However it seems natural to wonder and ask also which ones have been the heavy restorations which Septimius Severus and Caracalla were obliged to carry out so that the Pantheon could outlive the ruin of the time. At first it was believed in a complete reconstruction of the edifice by their intervention and that the stamps of the tiles had to be interpreted with great time distances. But the similitude of the masonry of the Pantheon with other Adrian's edifices as the Tiburtina villa and the mosoleaum, and the great difference with the one of the Antoninius (the thermae of Caracalla, the porches of Ottavia) put and end to these hypotheses.
What is more probable it is that the monument was by itself deteriorated only for what regarded the first pastering and the exterior decoration in stucco for the greater part and on account of this it seemed abbandoned and crumbling. Therefore restorations were made only on the particular finishings which did not at all change the form of the temple, but, to the emperor, they seemed to justify the affixing of the ancient inscription.
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After the restoration of Septimus Severus, in 399, the Pantheon was closed to the cult up to the 608 when the emperor Foca gave it to Pope Boniface IV who dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin and to all the Saints with the name of Maria ad Martyrs.
From the mediaeval few are the informations regarding the history of the new church : we only know that in 655 the emperor Constant II stripped it of all the golden bronze sheets which covered the vault of the rotonda and the pronaos to embellish the Constantinople City. These were, afterwards, sustituted in the 741 by Pope Gregory III with lead thin sheets which constitute its actual protection. In 1270, a small steeple was erected on the roof of the porch as we very well see it from some publications of the Renaissance.
At about ½ the XV century, were discovered, in the square in front of the temple, sculptured objects among which two porphyry lions, a granite basin and the great red porphyry urn which was turned into a tomb for pope Clement XII in the church of St. John in Lateran. Martin V made again part of the lead slabs placed as a protection of the roof deteriorated by the weather and during the pontificate of Eugene IV while making the paving of the square, fragments of a horse leg and of the wheel of a bronze cart which were attributed to the bas-relief of the tympanum.
With the follow up of the popes on the pontifical throne, the Pantheon met with as many restorations as despoliations and abuses. It is the case of pope Urbain VIII Barberini who made provision to put up again one of the three columns, which, already in the Middle Ages, had fallen pulling down part of the tympanum (and two others were substituted by pope Alessandro VII remaking the corinthian capital with the family coat of arms - the api-).
When he was restauring the exterior, he ordered to take away the precious bronze truss constituting the roof of the poarch which, from now on, remained with the beam in sight, so as to cast the columns of the canopy of St. Peter's basilica, and the making of new artilleries for the Castel Sant'Angelo. An estimate was made of the removed materials, and the result was : 450 thousands and 250 pounds of material and 9374 pounds only for nails. "What the barbarians did not do the Barberini did it" : this was the harsh comment of Pasquino.
He also did not shirk from altering the aspect of the Pantheon. It was due to his project that Bernini in the 600 erected the two towers which in history were called 'the donkey's cars' which were demolished in 1894 by the minister Baccelli to whom is also due the reinstatement of the bronze inscription on the attic. Moreover, in a letter of the Maes it was written : "The Bacceli minister, pulling down in one hour the old obstacles interposed by cupidity and by ignorance, was satisfying a secular wish of science and Romans.
On the 7th day of July, in the presence of the minister and the archeological commision, were given the first pick-axe strokes to the indigneous hovels which disfigure the most illustrious monument of the world : our Pantheon" In the period in which reigned the monarchy, in Italia, the Pantheon was used to receive the sepulchres of the regal family of the Savoia : Vittorio Emanuele was place in the semicircular niche, on the right, while Umberto I and Margherita found sepulchre in the radially opposed niche.
In the third niche, on the left, instead are resting the bones of the mortal remains of the renaissance painter, Raffaello Sanzio, who died at the age of only 37 years, in 1520, a dispassionate lover of the roman temple to the extent of willing to pass eternity in it.
He was the first to be buried in the rotonda, but soon he was not alone : in the Pantheon, infact, are also buried Peruzzi, Taddeo Zuccari, Perin del Vaga and Flaminio Vacca.
The last major restorations and consolidation have been carried out between 1929 and 1934 and at more recent periods are going up restorations of extension and importance. Many times it was proposed to modificate the northern part of the square of the Rotonda to render visible the flight of steps through which the temple was reached and to recreate the view from the bottom towards the top as it was in former times, but evidently it has not yet been possible to carry out the project.
The great roman monument "a ritonna" as fondly it was called by the people, after so many years it has come to us, sure not in its ancient splendor but never as the roman constructions at their own time similar, reduced, by now, to skeleton : the calidarium of the thermae of Caracalla or the Mausoleum of Helena (in Torpignattara) are two of the so many examples.
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