The Pantheon is an outstanding representative of what architecture in ancient Rome?

Today, the main building of the Pantheon was built by Emperor Hadrian in A.D. 120- 124. It is a 43.4-meter-high circular hall, which still enshrines all the Roman gods. In 609 AD, the Pantheon was given to the Pope, and later it was changed to a Catholic church, where many sacred skeletons were preserved and renamed the Church of the Martyrs of Santa Maria, and later it was designated as the state religion of Italy by the Treaty of La Deland. It is precisely because of this that the Pantheon was later preserved and was not destroyed as a pagan building.

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The Pantheon is a masterpiece of ancient Roman architecture. The foundation, walls and dome of the Pantheon are all concrete made of volcanic ash, which is very strong. The diameter of the bottom plane of the Pantheon is also 43.4 meters, which is equal to the height, making the internal space very complete and compact. The lower part of the Pantheon is a hollow cylinder, starting from half height, and the upper part is a hemispherical dome. The Pantheon base is 7.3m wide, the wall bottom and dome are 6m thick, and the dome top is 1.5m thick. In order to make the reduction of the dome wall thickness more conducive to the stability of the whole building of the Pantheon, the inner wall of the Pantheon dome is neatly divided into five rows (each row has 28 units), and each unit is hollow from top to bottom, which not only makes the reduction of the wall thickness more reasonable, but also increases the aesthetics of the Pantheon.

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In order to reduce the weight of the dome, the architect skillfully made 28 concave grids on the inner surface of the dome, which were divided into five rows. At the same time, seven cavities were opened on the premise that there were doors on the wall. These niches may be filled with the graves of gods and some famous people, such as the tomb of Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king after the Renaissance, and the tomb of Raphael, the Italian Renaissance painter. The height and diameter of the dome top are the same, both 43.3 meters. In this way, the cross section of the Pantheon can just accommodate the next full circle, and the two layers of its inner wall are also close to the golden section, so it is often regarded as an ancient example of realizing composition harmony through geometric forms. In the center of the dome, a circular hole with a diameter of 8.7 meters symbolizes the connection between the temple and the gods, which will attract and redistribute the great tension of the dome. Rain will also enter through this hole, but it will be discharged through 22 almost invisible holes in the sloping marble floor. [2]