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TOPIC: The Pantheon

Blobrana

L

Posts: 131433

Date: Aug 1 14:21 2011

RE: The Pantheon	Permalink

Rome's Pantheon may have been built as a massive sundial It is one of the best preserved buildings from the Roman world, a 2,000-year-old testament to the immense power and wealth of the empire. But mystery has always surrounded what lies behind the unusual design of the Pantheon, a giant temple in the heart of Rome that was built by the Emperor Hadrian. Now experts have come up with an intriguing theory - that the temple acted as a colossal sun dial, with a beam of light illuminating its enormous entrance at the precise moment that the emperor entered the building. Constructed on Hadrian's orders and completed in AD128, the Pantheon's hemispherical dome is punctured by a 30ft-wide circular hole known as the 'oculus'. Read more Inside the Pantheon, Rome Italy __________________

Blobrana

L

Posts: 131433

Date: Jun 16 18:36 2011

Hadrian's villa	Permalink

The Emperor's country estate is aligned to meet the solstices. Hadrian's villa 30 kilometres east of Rome was a place where the Roman Emperor could relax in marble baths and forget about the burdens of power. But he could never completely lose track of time, says Marina De Franceschini, an Italian archaeologist who believes that some of the villa's buildings are aligned so as to produce sunlight effects for the seasons. Read more __________________

Blobrana

L

Posts: 131433

Date: Oct 5 01:41 2009

The Pantheon	Permalink

Title: The role of the sun in the Pantheon's design and meaning Authors: Robert Hannah, Giulio Magli Despite being one of the most recognisable buildings from ancient Rome, the Pantheon is poorly understood. While its architecture has been well studied, its function remains uncertain. This paper argues that both the design and the meaning of the Pantheon are in fact dependent upon an understanding of the role of the sun in the building, and of the apotheosised emperor in Roman thought. Supporting evidence is drawn not only from the instruments of time in the form of the roofed spherical sundial, but also from other Imperial monuments, notably Nero's Domus Aurea and Augustus's complex of structures on the Campus Martius: his Ara Pacis, the "Horologium Augusti", and his Mausoleum. Hadrian's Mausoleum and potentially part of his Villa at Tivoli are drawn into this argument as correlatives. Ultimately, it is proposed that sun and time were linked architecturally into cosmological signposts for those Romans who could read such things. Read more (637kb, PDF) __________________

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