The Architectural Wonder of the Roman Pantheon

The Pantheon is one of the best preserved structures from Ancient Rome.  The building was constructed around 126 AD during the reign of the emperor, Hadrian and was first a Roman temple and later a Catholic Church.  To this day, the Pantheon is still the world’s largest concrete dome ever to be constructed without reinforcement.   

Since the building is so well preserved we know a lot about how it was built.  Standing on a 1.3 meter high base, the Pantheon is made up of two main parts, the porch and the interior building.  It is believed that stairs originally led to the entrance but in later years the exterior area was reconstructed to eliminate the need for stairs. 

The porch is done in the classic Greek style with eight Corinthian columns along the front that are 39 ft. (11.8 m) high.  The material used to build the columns is granite that was brought over from Mons Claudianu, Egypt.  Since the columns are 5 ft. in diameter and weigh 60 tons, getting them to the jobsite required much effort.  First they had to be dragged down to the banks of the Nile River on wooden sledges, put on barges to be transported downriver and then placed on ships to be go across the Mediterranean Sea.  From there they were again put on barges and pulled up the Tiber River to Rome.  Finally the columns were taken off the barges and moved 700 meters to the site of the Pantheon. 

 

In the main building, Roman concrete was used to construct the dome that measures 142 ft. (43.3 m) in diameter and is 142 ft. from the floor to the top of the dome.  The oculus of the dome is 30 ft. in diameter.  The thickness of the concrete walls varies from 21 ft. at the base to only 3.9 ft. around the oculus.  Tests done on other Roman ruins lead experts to hypothesis that the Pantheon’s tensile strength is 1.47 MPa (213 psi) with a “maximum tensile stress of only 128 kPa (18.5 psi) at the point where the dome joins the raised outer wall.”   

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Source:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome, ancient.eu/Pantheon/