The Rome Chronicles: The Pilgrimage

Text & Photography: Ar. Shermeen Beg
 
I must confess: Rome is not my favorite Italian city. Give me the grandeur of the Renaissance Palazzo of Florence, or the quintessential charm of Sorrento or even the small town warmth of Gubbio over the chaos and disrepair of Rome. Rome is just not a lovable city; the ruins, the traffic, the noise and the filth have made it less than appealing. Pope Pius II once commented on the Roman Forum: “Time has ruined all; ivy covers the walls that once were clothed with tapestries and golden draperies; thorns and scrub flourish where once sat purple-clad tribunes, and snakes infest the queen’s chambers.”

To experience true Rome I would suggest you stay home and watch the 1953 film ‘Roman Holiday’; a time when you could see the Trevi Fountain without being squashed by a Bangladeshi trying to sell you a rose on one side and a modern day gladiator offering to have his picture taken with you on the other; a time when you could fall asleep on a bench like Audrey Hepburn by the Coliseum without fear of someone picking your pocket; a time when you could playfully put your hand in the Bocca della Verita without first standing in line for the privilege.

Yet, there was one place that completely mesmerized me, one place where the hordes of tourists would evaporate in my mind’s eye as I would feel so completely engulfed in this womb. For me, all forays into the Historic City Centre of Rome began at the Piazza del Popolo, usually with one pilgrimage in mind. For it can only be described as a pilgrimage.

My favorite route would consist in taking the little alleys and lanes I had discovered during the course of my stay. I would avoid at all costs the Via del Corso, an Oxford Street of sorts, promising high street shopping teems of tourists and screeching cars. As I left the throbbing Corso behind me, the lanes become narrower and cooler as sunlight rarely filters through, and the only people I encountered along the way were locals who kept their heads down as they rushed about their business.

Anticipation pulsates as I get nearer. Despite knowing what awaits me at the end of my pilgrimage I find I am quickening my pace, and then I squint, for suddenly I have entered a sun-drenched piazza and before me stands the Pantheon.

This piazza is an epitome of the insouciant attitude of Romans to their great monuments. In spite of the edicts of successive popes and the provision of an alternate site, the populace persisted in using this piazza with its charming Renaissance fountain as a fish market till 1847. The roofs of the market stalls were supported by poles inserted into still visible holes cut in the columns of the Pantheon’s portico.

Today the fountain plays merrily on, the piazza a perfect setting for this perfect building that encapsulates perfect space. I have visited the Pantheon at all times of the day, I have been there in rain and shine, I have been there on Pentecost when rose petals are showered upon the congregation, I have watched the painstaking progress of the restoration as the scaffolding moved ever so slowly on the inside. Yet it is always this first breathtaking view that fills me with complete wonderment.

I could tell you the building is circular with a portico of three ranks of huge granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment opening into the rotunda. I could tell you that the 16 gray granite columns Hadrian ordered for the Pantheon’s pronaos were quarried at Mons Claudianus in Egypt’s eastern mountains. Each is 39 feet tall, five feet in diameter, and 60 tons in weight. These were dragged on wooden sledges when transporting on land. They were floated by barge down the Nile and transferred to vessels to cross the Mediterranean to the Roman port of Ostia where they were transferred back onto barges and up the Tiber to Rome. I could also tell you that except for the 3 columns on the left all are original. But in order for you to understand and appreciate the glory that is the Pantheon I must first tell you its history.

The origin of the Pantheon has been a much debated mystery. The inscription that appears on the trabeation of the portico tells us that this building was erected in 27BC by Marcus Agrippa. However this is misleading. While Marcus Agrippa may have made the first Pantheon, it was burnt in a fire in 80AD. Emperor Hadrian rebuilt the Pantheon in its entirety in 118-125AD but such was the emperors modesty that he never had his name inscribed on any of his buildings. Finally, in 1892, French architect Georges Chedanne discovered that the bricks of the Pantheon bore stamps dating from years between AD 120 to 125.

This Roman ‘temple of gods’ was ceded in 608AD by the Emperor of Byzantium to Pope Boniface IV, who dedicated it to the Virgin Mary and all the martyrs. In the Middle Ages it was used as a fortress, while, in 1625, at the orders of Urban VIII, the bronze sheeting of the beams of the portico was removed to cast 80 cannon for Castel S. Angelo and the four serpentine columns of the baldachin of Saint Peter’s. In 1870 the Pantheon was made the sacrarium of the kings of Italy and was restored; gates that had been installed to prevent the market held on the square in front from extending all the way into the temple were removed and the bell towers added by Bernini were demolished.

Moving through the portico one enters the Pantheon via bronze doors. Unlike all previous temples where the exterior dominated the interior architecturally, here it is the ‘cella’ (the cella or shrine being small and reserved for a limited number of adepts) which is the cynosure of the whole building. It is roofed with what was still the greatest dome in the world until the 20th century. The wonderful sense of harmony is probably due to the fact that the diameter of the dome is equal to the height of the building.

Aesthetics aside even a layman can appreciate this feat of engineering that would enable a building to withstand the thrust of the dome. This was achieved by a complicated system of relieving arches embedded in the huge mass of concrete that forms the core of the whole building, from its foundation to the summit of the dome. The concrete was mixed with travertine, tufa, brick and pumice stone in successive layers, with the heaviest materials at the lower levels, the lighter tufa and pumice mixture being used at the top of the dome. The thickness of the dome diminishes from about 20 feet at the base, to 5 feet at the summit. At the centre of this dome is an opening or oculus, 27 feet in diameter; the sole source of light within the building.

Hadrian has said about his design “My intentions had been that this sanctuary of All Gods should reproduce the likeness of the terrestrial globe and of the stellar sphere…The cupola…revealed the sky through a great hole at the center, showing alternately dark and blue. This temple, both open and mysteriously enclosed, was conceived as a solar quadrant. The hours would make their round on that coffered ceiling so carefully polished by Greek artisans; the disk of daylight would rest suspended there like a shield of gold; rain would form its clear pool on the pavement below, prayers would rise like smoke toward that void where we place the gods.”

As I stand inside the Pantheon looking heavenward, the chaos that I had managed to keep at bay is filtering through (an estimated 15 million tourists visit Rome each year). Returning to reality I have to admit that as much as I criticize the city, it is the enduring qualities of Roman sanctity, beauty and sensuality that offer a slight hope of outwitting time and decay.

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