The History of The Pantheon

Ancient:  In the aftermath of the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), Marcus Agrippa started an impressive building program: the Pantheon was a part of the complex created by him on his own property in the Campus Martius in 29-19 BCE, which included three buildings aligned from south to north: the Baths of Agrippa, the Basilica of Neptune, and the Pantheon. It seems likely that the Pantheon and the Basilica of Neptune were Agrippa's sacra privata, not aedes publicae (public temples). This less solemn designation would help explain how the building could have so easily lost its original name and purpose.

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It had long been thought that the current building was built by Agrippa, with later alterations undertaken, and this was in part because of the inscription on the front of the temple which reads:

M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT or in full: "M[arcus] AGRIPPA L[ucii] F[ilius] CO[n]S[ul] TERTIVM FECIT"

meaning "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, made [this building] when consul for the third time." However, archaeological excavations have shown that the earlier Pantheon of Agrippa was destroyed along with other buildings in a huge fire in the year 80 CE., leaving only the façade. The present construction probably began in 114 under Trajan, four years after having been destroyed by fire for the second time.

How the building was actually used is not known. Hadrian dedicated the Pantheon (among other buildings) in the name of the original builder. The inscription provides no information as to who Agrippa's foundation was dedicated to, and it was highly unlikely that in 25 BCE Agrippa would have presented himself as "consul tertium."  On coins, the same words M. Agrippa L.f cos. tertium were only used to refer to him after his death; consul tertium serving as a sort of posthumous cognomen ex virtute, a remembrance of the fact that, of all the men of his generation apart from Augustus himself, he was the only one to hold the consulship three times. Whatever the cause of the alteration of the inscription might have been, the new inscription reflects the fact that there was a change in the building's purpose.

Among the images which decorate it are the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus, so its name most likely came from this use. Another opinion of the name is that, because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens.

In 202, the building was repaired by the joint emperors Septimius Severus and his son Caracalla (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus), for which there is another, smaller inscription on the architrave of the facade, under the larger text. This now-barely legible inscription reads:

IMP · CAES · L · SEPTIMIVS · SEVERVS · PIVS · PERTINAX · ARABICVS · ADIABENICVS · PARTHICVS · MAXIMVS · PONTIF · MAX · TRIB · POTEST · X · IMP · XI · COS · III · P · P · PROCOS ET IMP · CAES · M · AVRELIVS · ANTONINVS · PIVS · FELIX · AVG · TRIB · POTEST · V · COS ·PROCOS · PANTHEVM · VETVSTATE · CORRVPTVM · CVM · OMNI · CVLTV · RESTITVERVNT

In English:

Emp[eror] Caes[ar] L[ucius] Septimius Severus Pius Pertinax, victorious in Arabia, victor of Adiabene, the great victor in Parthia, Pontif[ex] Max[imus], 10 times tribune, 11 times emperor, three times consul, P[ater] P[atriae], proconsul, and Emp[eror] Caes[ar] M[arcus] Aurelius Antoninus Pius Felix Aug[ustus], five times tribune, consul, proconsul, have carefully restored the Pantheon ruined by age.

Medieval: In 609, the Byzantine emperor Phocas gave the building to Pope Boniface IV, who converted it into a Christian church and consecrated it to Santa Maria ad Martyres: "Another Pope, Boniface, asked the same [Emperor Phocas, in Constantinople] to order that in the old temple called the Pantheon, after the pagan filth was removed, a church should be made, to the holy virgin Mary and all the martyrs, so that the commemoration of the saints would take place henceforth where not gods but demons were formerly worshiped.” Twenty-eight cartloads of holy relics of martyrs were said to have been removed from the catacombs and placed in a porphyry basin beneath the high altar.

The building's consecration as a church saved it from abandonment and the worst of the destruction that befell the majority of ancient Rome's buildings during the early medieval period. Paul the Deacon records the stripping of the building by the Emperor Constans II, who visited Rome in July 663: "Remaining at Rome twelve days he pulled down everything that in ancient times had been made of metal for the ornament of the city, to such an extent that he even stripped off the roof of the church [of the blessed Mary], which at one time was called the Pantheon, and had been founded in honour of all the gods and was now by the consent of the former rulers the place of all the martyrs; and he took away from there the bronze tiles and sent them with all the other ornaments to Constantinople."

Much fine external marble has been removed over the centuries - for example, capitals from some of the pilasters are in the British Museum. Two columns were swallowed up in the medieval buildings that abutted the Pantheon on the east and were lost.

In the early 17th.C., Pope Urban VIII Barberini tore away the bronze ceiling of the portico and replaced the medieval campanile with twin towers (often wrongly attributed to Bernini, whose great failure was the twin towers on the facade of St. Peter's), called "the ass's ears", which were not removed until the late 19th century. Another loss has been the external sculptures which adorned the pediment above Agrippa's inscription. The marble interior has largely survived, although with extensive restoration.

Renaissance: Since the Renaissance the Pantheon has been used as a tomb. Among those buried there are the painters Raphael Sanzio da Urbino and Annibale Carracci, the composer Arcangelo Corelli, and the architect Baldassare Peruzzi. In the 15th.C. the Pantheon was adorned with paintings. The best-known is the 'Annunciation' by Melozzo da Forlì. Architects like Brunelleschi, who used the Pantheon as help when designing the Cathedral of Florence's dome, looked to the Pantheon as inspiration for their works.

Pope Urban VIII (1623 to 1644) ordered the bronze ceiling of the Pantheon's portico melted down. Most of the bronze was used to make bombs for the fortification of Castel Sant'Angelo, with the remaining amount used by the Apostolic Camera for various other works. It is also said that the bronze was used by Bernini in creating his famous baldachin above the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica, but, according to at least one expert, the Pope's accounts state that about 90% of the bronze was used for the cannon and that the bronze for the baldachin came from Venice. In 1747, the internal broad frieze below the dome with its false windows was "restored," but bore little resemblance to the original. In the early decades of the 20th.C., a piece of the original, as could be reconstructed from Renaissance drawings and paintings, was recreated in one of the panels.

Modern: Two kings of Italy are buried in the Pantheon: Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I, as well as Umberto's Queen, Margherita. Although Italy has been a republic since 1946, volunteer members of Italian monarchist organisations maintain a vigil over the royal tombs in the Pantheon. This has aroused protests from time to time from republicans, but the Catholic authorities allow the practice to continue, although the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage is in charge of the security and maintenance.

The Pantheon is still in use as a Catholic church. Masses are celebrated there on Sundays and holy days of obligation, as are weddings.