The front portico of the Pantheon, and the Piazza della Rotonda.
Arial shot of the Pantheon, with the Oculus in the center of the dome.
View of the coffered concrete ceiling and the oculus.
Panoramic view of the interior.
This is the Pantheon in Rome. I have never been to Rome, but I have wanted to see the Pantheon for a long time. Built 2000 years ago, it still has the largest, un-reinforced, concrete dome in the world. Somehow, the ancient Romans where able to mix and pour that much concrete into a supported molds up to 142 ft in the air. The oculus is the whole in the center of the dome. It does three things, it allows a lot of light into what would otherwise have been a very dark building, it allows the smoke of what would have been flame sourced lighting in ancient times to escape, and most importantly it makes the concrete dome possible by eliminating a lot of weight from the dome at its weakest point. in fact the Romans used a lot of different tricks to make the dome lighter, such as decreasing its thickness as they went up, using lighter aggregate on higher levels, and having honeycombed sections to save weight. These are all techniques that we would still use in modern times. As an engineering student I find the building fascinating.
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