Reassessing the Pantheon in Rome

The Pantheon in Rome has a far more interesting and complex history than we give it credit for. Admired as a creation of almost mystical perfection, it is in reality full of interesting quirks and compromises. We know very little about the Pantheon’s history from independent sources (indeed, even its attested attribution to the emperor Hadrian is now being seriously challenged), so we must rely on the building itself to document its own past. The lecture discusses the results of an informal survey of the building’s eight-column-wide porch. This overlies the remains of a wider, ten-column porch, whose date and attribution remain very much in question. The existing pediment is full of rarely noticed eccentricities; they suggest not only unusual haste in the building’s completion, but the evident use of ill-matching components, some of which may have been intended for the abandoned (?) larger porch. Many of these eccentricities can be confirmed by a recent digital laser survey of the building undertaken by the Karman Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Bern. The Bern project offers a new tool for close analysis of the building, particularly those parts that cannot be reached physically without scaffolding.
This lecture is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.

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