Monumental Politics

Ancient domed temple.
     If your imagination is fried from trying to reconstruct ancient buildings out of today's rubble, visit the Pantheon, Rome's best-preserved monument. This domed temple, more than any other building, gives us a feel for the magnificence and grandeur of Rome at its peak. Engineers still admire how the Romans built such a mathematically precise structure without computers, fossil fuel-run machinery, or electricity. On this half-hour visit, we'll marvel at the magnificent dome, learn how it was built, see where Romans paid homage to their pagan gods, and visit the tombs of some famous people buried here. Finally, we'll stand under the Pantheon's solemn dome and gain a new appreciation for the enlightenment of these ancient people. Don't forget to download the handy PDF companion maps.
     Sightseeing nitty-gritty: Admission is free. The Pantheon is open Mon–Sat 8:30–19:30, Sun 9:00–18:00, holidays 9:00–13:00, closed for Mass Sat at 17:00 and Sun at 10:30. To reach the Pantheon neighborhood, you can walk (20 minutes from Capitol Hill or 5 minutes from Piazza Navona), or take a taxi or bus (e.g. #64 and #40) to the square called Largo Argentina located a few blocks south of the Pantheon. Photos allowed, even with flash. The nearest WCs are at neighborhood cafes, including downstairs in the McDonald's on the Pantheon's square.
     The Pantheon neighborhood is well worth exploring, with historic churches, restaurants, Piazza Navona, and not far from the Trevi Fountain. The area is especially atmospheric at night.
     [This audio tour was updated in 2023]
     For more specifics, consult my guidebook. This was excerpted from Rick Steves' Rome 2010. Copyright 2009 Avalon Travel. Related information at www.ricksteves.com.

Rome: Pantheon Audio Tour - Audio Europe: Italy (Venice, Florence, Rome)

Ruins of old city center.  
     The Agora was the heart of ancient Athens — its "downtown." Walk through the remains of former shopping malls, theaters, taverns, and government buildings. You'll see the dusty ruins come to life as Rick describes the fascinating people who once worked, shopped, and played here.
     Starring: Athens' best-preserved ancient temple, a rebuilt "stoa," a fine museum, and the footsteps of great Athenians.
     Practicalities: €4 or covered by €12 Acropolis ticket. Open daily May–Sept 8:00–20:00, Oct–April 8:00–15:00. Located at the foot of the Acropolis, Metro: Monastiraki. Tel. 210-321-0180, www.culture.gr.
     More info: Excerpted from the book "Rick Steves' Greece," www. ricksteves.com

Ancient Agora Audio Tour - Audio Europe: Greece

(sfx:  sounds of shoes walking on the marble floor and echoing in the space, people chatting quietly)

ACTOR: TOUR GUIDE:  
Attenzione!  Benvenuto. Your tour of the Pantheon will begin soon.  Gather round, and I’ll point out some of the most important features of this famous building, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Rome.

Look down at the marble floor – do you see the square and circle patterns?  They can also be found in the band of colored marble that decorates the walls. Try to find the larger-than-life-size marble statues, and tall granite columns.

This building is more than 1800 years old -- the Roman emperor Hadrian had it built as a temple to ancient gods.  

Now, look up to the concrete, domed ceiling.  That opening at the top is called the “oculus,” which is Latin for “eye.”  Through the oculus, you can see the bright blue sky.  We’re lucky that we are visiting on such a nice day – can you imagine what it is like when it rains?!

Since the weather is so lovely, let’s head out toward the open door. I see a fountain just outside. We can grab a gelato and enjoy the sights and sounds of Rome! Andiamo! 

(sfx:  sounds of shoes walking on the marble floor and echoing in the space)

FEMALE NARRATOR: 
This painting by Giovanni Paolo Panini allows us to imagine what it might be like to visit the Pantheon. 

Panini was an Italian artist who lived in the 1700s.  He trained and worked as both an architect and painter.  Panini specialized in painting the important buildings and sights of Rome.  His paintings captured the excitement of the city and were popular with visiting tourists, who took them home as souvenirs just like we take home postcards today.  

Here Panini shows people gathered in conversation, kneeling in prayer, and sightseeing.  All the people give us a sense of how large a building the Pantheon is!  

The Pantheon’s impressive architecture has inspired many buildings, including the Rotunda of the National Gallery of Art.  Stop by and see the Rotunda, and think about how it compares to the Pantheon. 


Interior of the Pantheon, Rome, Panini-Kid’s

Can advice from ancient Rome redeem the current political scene in the United States? Dirk Ippen fellow Michèle Lowrie discusses this anomalous, yet timely question in a review of Philip Freeman’s translations of the works of the brothers Cicero.

Beyond the Lecture: Michèle Lowrie on Ancient Rome

Alexander Nemerov, department chair and Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities, Stanford University. In the six-part lecture series The Forest: America in the 1830s, Nemerov explores the Hudson River School painters and their contemporaries, focusing on what their art did and did not show of the teeming world around them. The forest serves as a metaphor for the unruly and wooded realms of lived experience to which art can only gesture. The lectures present a fundamentally new account of Thomas Cole (1801–1848), John Quidor (1801–1881), James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), and other artists and writers of that time.  The fifth lecture, held April 30, is entitled “Emerson, Raphael, and Light Filtering through Trees.” On March 28, 1833, in Rome, Ralph Waldo Emerson first saw Raphael’s Transfiguration. “What tenderness & holiness beams from the face of the Christ in that Work,” he wrote later that year, avowing that Raphael’s picture was the greatest he had ever seen. Transposed to the American woods, Raphael’s Jesus suggested the transfiguring glories of nature. Yet on the dark forest floor, in the woods of Hawthorne and Cooper, what Pan-like god lurked, idling in isolated pools, sullenly reflecting only on itself?

The Sixty-Sixth A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, Part 5: Emerson, Raphael

 Michael Fried, J. R. Herbert Boone Professor and director of the Humanities Center, The Johns Hopkins University
In a series of six lectures, Michael Fried offers a compelling account of what he calls "the internal structure of the pictorial act" in the revolutionary art of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The accompanying publication, The Moment of Caravaggio, is available for purchase from the Gallery Shops. In this audio podcast of the sixth lecture, originally delivered at the National Gallery of Art on May 19, 2002, Professor Michael Fried argues that Caravaggio's art should be understood not simply as a monument to a revolutionary style of pictorial realism, but also as an investigation into the psychic and physical dynamic that went into its making. Fried evokes this dynamic with concepts introduced in earlier lectures, including immersion and specularity, absorption and address, painting and mirroring, and optical and bodily modes of realism—what he calls "the internal structure of the pictorial act."

The Moment of Caravaggio: Part 6: Painting and Violence

Beyond the Lecture is a podcast from the American Academy in Berlin featuring short interviews with our residential fellows and guest lecturers from a range of academic disciplines, journalism, and the arts.

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