Category Archives: Exploring Italy

Exploring Turin:  Duomo

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Turin Cathedral, Italy: Chapel of the Holy Shroud

The Cathedral of St John the Baptist (Cattedrale di San Giovanni Battista, Duomo di Torino) is worth visiting for the sake of an object that’s hardly ever seen – the Holy Shroud (Sacra Sindone).

The church interior is not particularly ornate.  The nave is plain, with Doric piers supporting round arches, the bulk of it built very quickly between 1491 and 1498 alongside a slightly older brick bell tower.  There is, however, a sequence of spectacularly Baroque side chapels, a huge organ case aloft in a transept, and a shrine to the twentieth-century Catholic local hero Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901-1925), due to be canonised in the centenary of his death from polio.

The domed Chapel of the Holy Shroud (1668-94) fills the space between the east end of the Cathedral and the adjacent Royal Palace. 

The story of the revered relic it was built to contain is unrecorded before 1354, when it was exhibited in the French town of Lirey about a hundred miles east of Paris.

It came into the possession of the Royal House of Savoy in 1453,  and was kept in the royal chapel at the Savoyard capital, Chambéry.  There it sustained fire-damage in 1532, and it was transferred to the new capital of Savoy, Turin, in 1578.

Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy (1634-1675) commissioned priest, engineer and mathematician Camillo Guarino Guarini (1624-1683), to complete the elaborate chapel that had been planned by his predecessor, Charles Emmanuel I “the Great”, Duke of Savoy (1562-1630). 

The floor of the Shroud Chapel is raised so that the interior Is visible from the nave, and both public pilgrims and royal visitors could gain access to the chapel on separate occasions.  Crowned by Guarini’s dome, a masterpiece of engineering, the Chapel was consecrated by the architect in 1680, but was only completed after his death.  It was finally ready to receive the Shroud in 1694.

At the time of the 1898 exposition of the Shroud it was photographed for the first time by an amateur photographer, Secondo Pia (1855-1941), who was astonished that the negative image provided detail invisible to the naked eye.

Following a fire in 1997, the Shroud is currently stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled case in a side-chapel. 

Since 1998, the 500th anniversary of the Cathedral’s consecration, the Shroud has been shown much more frequently than before, in 2000, 2010, 2015 and (by live stream because of Covid) at Easter 2020.

At all other times visitors are invited to sit in front of a digital image of Christ’s face, an opportunity that is treated with the greatest respect.  Even the bambini fall quiet.

I respect the views of scientists who say the Shroud’s herringbone weave postdates the time of Christ, that the images are painted with identifiable colour agents such as iron oxide, and so on, but I also sense that we can’t possibly know the significance of this piece of fabric. 

There’s an ethereal quality about the image that defies logic, and hosts of visitors to Turin gaze with awe at what may be the face of their Redeemer.

Monumental cemetery

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Cimitero Monumentale, Milan, Italy: monument to the family of Francesco Podreider (1830-1894), by Domenico Ghidoni (1857-1920) – ‘Christ cleansing the Temple’

Milan’s Monumental Cemetery [Cimitero Monumentale di Milano], designed by Carlo Maciachini (1818-1899), is one of a number of magnificent Italian burial sites that far outclass even the major British examples.

This vast valhalla extends to 250,000 square metres.  The main section, predominantly Catholic as one would expect, was opened in 1866 and the Jewish section was added in 1872 and extended in 1913.  Non-Catholic gentiles are buried in a third area.

Tripadvisor recommends giving an hour to a location that would be difficult to explore thoroughly in less than a day without a guide or guide-book.  It’s an architectural and artistic buffet, and wandering is like going to Harrod’s food hall looking for a snack.

Facing the spacious entrance piazza, the Famedio (1887), a huge hall of fame in “Neo-Medieval” style, contains the remains of many of Milan’s most prominent citizens, and has sarcophagi commemorating the novelist Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873), the philosopher Carlo Cattaneo (1801-1869) and the architect Luca Beltrami (1854-1933). 

The tombs in the archways of the Famedio’s extensive arcades are loaded with statuary in great variety, and avenues radiate from the terrace crowded with a similar variety of fortissimo graves and monuments. 

Mausolea in traditional styles – classical, Romanesque, Byzantine, – stand alongside modern structures of plate glass and steel.  Only Gothic seems to be absent.  Extravagance of design, materials, imagery, style and symbolism abound.  Bronze, copper, masonry and occasionally brick and terracotta are indiscriminately used according to families’ preference. 

Figures are draped across tombs in agonies of grief;  Father Time’s scythe reaches up from the earth.  Alongside symbol and allegory are obvious portraits, including some delightful matriarchs.  There is a surprising number of nudes, the females entirely uncovered and very beautiful, the males strategically covered.

Milan came early to embrace cremation.  Its Crematorium Temple, which also serves as a columbarium, was the first in the world, opened in 1876 and remained in use until 1992.  The range of cremators remains behind iron doors, one of them visible to the public.

I couldn’t begin to catalogue the fine monuments I photographed. 

(Google translations disconcertingly render Italian descriptions of these great monuments, edicola, as “news-stand”;  the French equivalent is Kiosque.  It’s derived from the Latin aedicula, which among other things means “shrine”.)

One exceptional example, the tomb of the textile manufacturer Antonio Bernocchi (1859-1930), is an inventive reiteration of Trajan’s Column in Rome, designed by the architect Alessandro Minali (1888-1960) and the sculptor Giannino Castiglioni (1884-1971):  Bernocchi Newsstand | Monumental Cemetery Milan (comune.milano.it). 

The tomb of the Campari family, beverage manufacturers whose famous aperitif bears their name, is an elaborate life-sized representation of the Last Supper by Giannino Castiglioni (1884-1971) – Campari Newsstand | Monumental Cemetery Milan (comune.milano.it) – and the monument to the family of Francesco Podreider (1830-1894), by Domenico Ghidoni (1857-1920), is a dramatic portrayal of Christ Cleansing the Temple:  Gospel Iconography | Monumental Cemetery Milan (comune.milano.it).

The composer Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) lies in a mausoleum decorated with carvings by Leonardo Bistolfi (1859-1933), along with his wife Carla Finzi (d1951), his four children and his son-in-law, the pianist Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989) and his daughter-in-law, the classical dancer Lucia Fornaroli (1888-1954):  Toscanini Newsstand | Monumental Cemetery Milan (comune.milano.it)

In contrast to these lively expressions of grief, the dour monument designed by Mario Palanti (1885-1978) for his parents and family, consists of truncated Doric columns supporting a vast sarcophagus.  It was built in the years 1928-30, and its crypt was used as an air-raid shelter in the Second World War.  It now serves as the Civic Mausoleum [Civico Mausoleo] honouring Milanese celebrities such as Herbert Einstein (1847-1902), father of the physicist Albert.

The Monumental Cemetery is overwhelming.  It certainly deserves more than an hour of anyone’s time.

Topless towers

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Piazza della Cisterna, San Gimignano, Italy

I’d always wanted to visit San Gimignano after reading about it, and then seeing the film Tea with Mussolini (1999). 

I wonder if the towers [torri] of Tuscan hill-towns inspired Christopher Marlowe to give Faustus the line about “the topless towers of Ilium”. 

The fourteen existing medieval skyscrapers in San Gimignano, erected in a race for status between rival families, are astonishing, though there were once seventy-two such towers on the skyline.

On my first short visit in 2018 the only historic site I visited seriously, in the 30°C heat, was the Collegiate Church [Duomo] where in Tea with Mussolini Judi Dench protects the frescoes. 

They form a spectacular sequence, vividly illustrating the Old and New Testaments, the Last Judgement, the Annunciation, St Sebastian (who seems to have a high profile in this part of Tuscany) and the life of St Fina (otherwise St Serafina), whose shrine is in a side chapel with, in a gilded frame, the rough plank on which she lay for the last five years of her life.

The Chiesa di San Lorenzo di Ponte which stands at the end of the Via del Castello, contains precious frescoes that Judi Dench’s character would certainly have respected.

The early medieval images are indeed fine, but the church had been neglected and then shut down by disputes between rival religious orders, and the interior repeatedly suffered what the English translation of the Italian Wikipedia article calls “water infiltrations”.  By the end of the eighteenth century the building was an oil mill and wine cellar.  The church was eventually restored in the early twentieth century and reopened in 1937.  It’s a remarkable survival.

When I returned in 2022, San Gimignano was the raison d’être of the entire holiday, a time to enjoy simply being there, with optional tourism. 

San Gimignano is a place of serious historic significance that’s worth of study, but more than that it’s beautiful and atmospheric.  There’s a golden hour in San Gimignano around 10.00am, after which the tourist buses unload.

I felt no need to keep up with what Philip Larkin called “ruin-bibber[s], randy for antique”.  It’s enough simply to be there.

On my last evening I walked up to the Piazza della Cisterna and sat down at the Ristorante La Cisterna [Ristorante – Hotel Cisterna (www-hotelcisterna-it.translate.goog)], looking past the actual cisterna, or well-head, to the cluster of buildings in front of the Torre Grossa, the biggest tower of all in the town, 177 feet high. 

I had plenty of time to admire the view, which I took as a sign that real cooking was taking place.  My dinner, when it arrived, was delicious.

You don’t have to walk far to eat your way round San Gimignano.

Milan’s drawing room

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Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan

The magnificently named Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II (in blunt English, King Victor Emmanuel II’s Shopping Centre) is an architectural jewel.

Stretching from the square, Piazza del Duomo, in front of Milan’s magnificent cathedral to the home of the legendary La Scala theatre, Piazza della Scala, the Galleria is colloquially known as “Milan’s drawing room” (il Salotto di Milano), one of the great formal spaces which distinguish the city.

Its architect, Giuseppe Mengoni (1829-1877), after twelve years’ work on the gallery’s construction, fell to his death during a final inspection two days before the royal opening by the king whose name it bears.

Mengoni combined splendid décor with engineering virtuosity to provide two barrel-vaulted, top-lit, galleried passages intersecting at an octagon surmounted by an iron-and-glass dome 123 feet in diameter and 56 feet high.

It was by no means the first such covered shopping arcade in a major city.  The genre dates back to the Parisian Passage des Panoramas (1800), London’s Burlington Arcade (1818) and the Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries in Brussels (1847), but the Milan Galleria – larger than any of its predecessors – presented an unprecedented spectacle for shoppers.

It inspired a succession of splendid malls such as the Galleria Umberto I in Naples (Emanuele Rocco, 1890) and two of Britain’s finest arcades, the Leadenhall Arcade (Sir Horace Jones, 1881) in the City of London and County Arcade, Leeds (Frank Matcham, 1898-1904).

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is, inevitably, the sort of shopping opportunity where if you need to ask the price you can’t afford the goods.

It’s the prime Milanese location for Giorgio Armani, Gucci, Prada, Swarovski and Louis Vuitton – brands that can position two pairs of shoes in a sumptuously decorated window and wait for the customers to stroll in.  Most visitors, of course, look at the windows and stroll on.

McDonalds maintained a discreet presence here for twenty years, but were let go when the lease came up for renewal.  They were compensated by premises nearby.

The mosaic floor under the octagon is embellished with the arms of Milan and the three major cities of the Kingdom of Italy – Rome, Florence and Turin – which was united in 1861, the year Mengoni produced the Galleria’s original design.

The arms of the city of Turin illustrate an unmistakably masculine bull, and the Milanese custom is to place your heel on the testicles of the animal and spin 360° for luck.  Indeed, if you do this on the stroke of midnight on December 31st you can expect good fortune for the whole year.

The result is that the poor bull’s genitals became entirely obliterated.

I didn’t see this performance when I visited, though I did see an extremely large gentleman sitting, like Buddha, in the middle of one of the coats of arms, while his loved ones took his photo on their phones.

He didn’t spin on his axis.

Italian job

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Lingotto Building, Turin, Italy: former test track

It’s not feasible to travel by train from Florence to London within a day.

When I took the Great Rail Journeys ‘Highlights of Tuscany’ tour [https://www.greatrail.com/tours/highlights-of-tuscany]  our return journey was broken at Turin.

As we drove through the Turin suburbs our guide Caroline mentioned that our hotel, the Nh Lingotto Congress [https://www.nh-hotels.com/hotel/nh-torino-lingotto-congress], was a conversion of a former Fiat car factory.  I’d vaguely heard about an Italian car factory turned into a hotel but I was unprepared for the luxurious splendour to which we were treated.

The building is a lengthy concrete-framed oblong with an elegant façade, built 1916-23 to the designs of Giacomo Matté-Trucco (1869-1934), originally the Fiat company’s in-house architect and engineer, but in private practice by the time he conceived the Lingotto factory.

When car production ceased in 1982 its renovation was entrusted to the Genoese architect Renzo Piano (b 1937), already well-known for collaborating with Richard Rodgers on the Centre Georges Pompidou (1971-77) in Paris and latterly famous for the Shard (2000-2012) at London Bridge.

Piano’s scheme embraces an exhibition centre (1992), an auditorium (1994), two hotels (1995) and a shopping centre.  The site includes a helipad and an art gallery stocked with pieces from the collection of Giovanni and Marella Agnelli:  Giovanni Agnelli (1921-2003) was customarily known as Gianni to distinguish him from his grandfather and namesake (1866-1945), the founder of the Fiat company.

The hotel lobby is cool and modern, and the space within the outer wings of the factory buildings is filled with a dense jungle visible through glazed walls.  The bedrooms are beautifully finished, reflecting the calibre of the designer, using the high ceilings of the original factory design, spacious and comfortable.

Although I felt hot and exhausted I couldn’t resist exploring, and by the time I’d showered and had some lunch other tour-guests were insisting I should go to the roof to see the “race-track”. 

The key to the complex is the shopping mall, 8 (Italian number ‘otto’, echoing ‘Lingotto’).  Among the shop units is the Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, where a haughty young lady behind a desk pointed towards a lift which took me up four storeys to another even more haughty female who pointed me towards a further lift which carried me to the fifth-floor art gallery and the roof.

The bijou art-gallery is a delight, containing a couple of Canova sculptures and a series of paintings by Canaletto, Bellotto, Renoir, Manet, Matisse and Picasso.  No British shopping centre can boast such a life-enhancing experience above the shops.

Only when I walked on to the sunlit roof did I realise that the so-called race-track was not visible from the roof, it was the roof – an intact and well-preserved test-track, designed to run cars at 90kph at a time when the normal top speed was 70kph, with alarmingly banked curves at each end.  It features in The Italian Job (1969).

Back at shop level I got lost, which was a benefit because I came upon the helical ramp which runs through the building to give cars access to the roof. 

When I read it all up in Wikipedia Italian (in English translation, naturally,) I discovered that the raw materials were brought in at ground level, presumably from the nearby rail line, and cars were assembled as they moved upwards through the building until they emerged complete and road-ready on the roof – the exact opposite of the process in the Studebaker Building in midtown Chicago.

There’s an excellent video-essay on the Lingotto factory at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciscQuVD5vo.

Castello con un teatro annesso

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Castello di Meleto, Tuscany, Italy: theatre

One of the delights of my Great Rail Journeys ‘Highlights of Tuscany’ holiday [https://www.greatrail.com/tours/highlights-of-tuscany] was a life-enhancing visit to the Castello di Meleto [http://www.castellomeleto.it/eng/castle/castle.php].

This is an intriguing place, a medieval hill-top castle documented from 1256 and for centuries owned by the Ricasoli-Firidolfi family, who sold up only in 1968.  The interiors, on the ground floor at least, are entirely baroque, with an unrestored patina of faded splendour.

We were treated to a cookery demonstration by the chef, Elena, who spoke only Italian, translated (or perhaps explicated) by the hostess Geraldine, who extolled the quality of the Castle’s extra virgin olive oil, which we were invited to smell and taste.

We were shown how to make an Italian stew, which seemed to me exactly how I would make an English stew with Italian ingredients. 

The pasta-making demonstration was more entertaining, and a great deal of pasta was passed hand to hand around the group. 

We were invited out for antipasti on the terrace, where a classical wing of the house (with a medieval turret on the end) faces a flat lawn and a wall, from where expanses of hillside vineyards are visible. 

No sooner had we wandered outside than a misty rain began to fall, and within ten minutes the waitresses shifted the antipasti back into the castle and a loud clap of thunder heralded a downpour that lasted no more than half an hour.

We tucked into the antipasti indoors while Geraldine gave lectures first on the Castle’s white wine and then on the rosé, all the time pouring wine into everyone’s glasses and interrupting her flow with “I’ll fetch another bottle.”  There was no sniffing or spitting.  This was a straightforward invitation to get trollied.

We weren’t formally shown the downstairs rooms, but instead trotted off to the cellars which are tricked out with barrels and racks of bottles.

Geraldine took us from the cellars to a surprise – a tiny, intact private theatre, dated 1741, complete with perspective scenery and a balcony.  I can find nothing of any significance about it online, and I’ve never come across it in the theatre-history literature. 

Indeed, I wonder if its provenance and history have been seriously researched.  It is at any rate a great rarity. 

A three-course dinner followed, liberally lubricated with red chianti and a dessert wine.  I sat back from the conversation and watched the sunset through the trees outside the window. 

Then predictably, “pat,…like the catastrophe in the old comedy”, came the buying opportunity.  My fellow guests queued up to buy bottles of wine and olive oil, while I sat in an armchair and watched.

Eventually we began the journey back, of which the first seventy minutes were simply a succession of hairpin bends and a few small villages.  We joined the motorway south of Florence, and it took another three-quarters of an hour to reach our hotel in Montecatini Terme.

I reflected on the considerable appeal of the Castillo di Meleto.  It’s now owned by a joint-stock company and you can stay there, at rates which are high but not outrageous.  However, it’s so remote that it would be impractical to go anywhere:  it’s simply a place to enjoy, with extensive gardens, an infinity pool and a restaurant down the drive for lunch and dinner: https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://www.castellomeleto.it/&prev=search.

Montecatini Alto

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Monticatini Terme, Italy: Funicolare

Monticatini Terme, Italy: Funicolare

The town clustering round the Montecatini Terme spa is relatively modern:  until the eighteenth century the area on which it is built was a swamp.

The old town is a small, perfect Tuscan hill town, Montecatini Alto, strongly suggestive of the better known San Gimignano, with towers, churches and a market place perched at an altitude of 1,000 feet above the valley floor. Of the twenty-five medieval towers built in Montecatini, six survive.

The easy way to Montecatini Alto is by the Funicolare connecting the historic hill-town with the baths in the valley bottom.  This one-kilometre line opened in 1898, in the presence of local resident Giuseppe Verdi.  The track was blown up in 1944 and restored in 1949.  There was a further closure for upgrading between 1977 and 1982.

The two cars, named Gigio and Gigia (also numbered 1 and 2 for the avoidance of ambiguity) are inclined, with three compartments and external balconies front and back.  Gradient markers towards the top indicate increasing gradients from 25% to 38.5%.  The views are spectacular and the experience didn’t feel vertiginous.  The line stops for lunch between 1.00pm and 2.30pm.  A round-trip, taking less than ten minutes, costs €7:  https://www.funicolare-montecatini.it/orari-e-prezzi/timetable-and-prices.

At the top I visited the quiet little Church of St Joseph & St Philip and, next to it, the Torre dell’Orologio, a clock tower with an unusual dial showing only six instead of twelve numbers.  The Torre dell’Orologio was fitted with a dial facing northwards across the town by 1552, and the existing mechanism dates from 1695.  It chimes “alla Romana”, the Roman striking system in which a low note represents five and a high note one.

At the opposite end of the main square, the Piazza Giuseppe Giusti, I climbed another hill to visit the Church of St Peter the Apostle, which has an odd little museum, including a disconcerting relic of Saint Barbara, the patron saint of Montecatini.

There’s an authoritative account of Montecatini Alto at https://experiencedtraveller.com/journal/2016-08-21-montecatini-alto-in-tuscany-medieval-meets-modern.

Montecatini Terme

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Montecatini Terme, Italy: Tettuccio Spa

Montecatini Terme, Italy: Tettuccio Spa

I’d never have found my way to Monticatini Terme if I hadn’t booked a Great Rail Journeys ‘Highlights of Tuscany’ holiday [https://www.greatrail.com/tours/highlights-of-tuscany] which was based in the excellent Hotel Francia & Quirinale [https://www.franciaequirinale.it/en], providing four-star quality with individuality and amenity, meticulously efficient service, an elegant lobby, a spacious lounge with many settees and a grand piano and an equally spacious restaurant with a separate area for private parties.

Two minutes’ walk from the hotel is the Parco delle Terme, which contains the spa from which the town takes its modern name, strongly reminiscent of Buxton or Harrogate and utterly enjoyable:  https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://www.termemontecatini.it/&prev=search.  Open courtyards with columned arcades open one into another, with fountains and an apsidal concert stage for music.

Baths on this site are documented back to 1201, and were reported by the Montecatini physician Ugolino Simoni in 1417.  In modern times the spa was developed by Grand Duke Peter Leopold, who sponsored the construction of the Bagno Regio (1773), the Terme Leopoldine (1775) and the Terme Tettuccio (1779).

The heyday of the resort was the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Though some parts are in need of restoration they evoke the time when the composer Verdi lived in the town, with such neighbours as Pietro Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Beniamino Gigli and Luigi Pirandello.

A series of elaborate marble counters offers a variety of waters through labelled taps:  Rinfresco, which “promotes the elimination of waste through the renal pathways and restores lost salts in sports training”, was the only water that was actually flowing and for lack of a cup I couldn’t drink any of it.  It wasn’t very warm.  Behind the counters a series of tiled pictures show the ages of man, voluptuously suggesting how water improves health at every age.

I had lunch – smoked salmon and remarkably tasty white bread accompanied by a litre of aqua naturale – in the high, domed, dignified Caffè Le Terme, far too grand to be called a café in any language but Italian.  On a very hot day the air conditioning was natural and effective – huge doors wide open on three sides of the high-ceilinged room.

Elsewhere in the park from the main complex are other spa buildings, the Terme Torretta (1904), the Terme Excelsior (1907) and the Terme Tamerici (1911).

At the edge of the park, I booked a table for dinner at the Profumo Garden Bistrot [https://www.thefork.it/ristorante/profumo-garden-bistrot/307299?cc=18174-54f] and later enjoyed a superlative five-course meal in an open-air setting, as the hot day cooled to warm and the sun dipped lower in the sky.  Perfect.

La Rotonda

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Villa Capra, "La Rotonda", Vicenza, Italy

Villa Capra, “La Rotonda”, Vicenza, Italy

One of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen is Andrea Palladio’s Villa Capra, otherwise called La Rotonda, on the outskirts of Vicenza.

Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) was the Italian architect who, during the second half of the sixteenth century, studied and revived the principles of proportion and decorum that distinguished classical Roman architecture, designing and building villas across the rural Veneto, and churches, public buildings and palaces in Vicenza and Venice.

Strictly, La Rotonda is not a villa:  it was not intended to have ancillary farm buildings, and Palladio himself referred to it as a palazzo.  It was built within reach of the city as a retirement residence for a Vatican priest, Paolo Almerico, who died in 1589 before the building was completed.

The house passed to two brothers, Odorico and Marco Capra, who engaged Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548-1616), to finish the project, lowering the profile of the Palladio’s intended dome to resemble the Pantheon in Rome, though with a cupola instead of an open oculus.

The Villa Capra’s aesthetic perfection is founded on practicality.  The square footprint is set at 45° to the cardinal directions of the compass, so that the corners point north, south, east and west, and the layout of the four porticos and the rooms within is intended to provide shade throughout the day.

The house stands on a small hill, approached by a carriage drive to the north-west portico, so that the other three porticos each present a distinctive view across the surrounding plain.

Within each portico vestibules lead to the double-height circular central hall, which has a balcony above and is lit by the cupola that surmounts the dome.  The walls are covered in sumptuous trompe d’oeil decoration and frescoes by Alessandro and Giambattista Maganza and Anselmo Canera.

Had he lived, Paolo Almerico would have enjoyed a degree of state to echo his working life in the Vatican.

This treasure of classical architecture has survived intact, and is regularly open to visitors:  http://www.villalarotonda.it/en/visiting.htm.

Dedicated to all the gods

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The Pantheon, Rome: dome and oculus

The Pantheon, Rome: dome and oculus

Rome was the first foreign city I ever visited on my own, and among the many memorable sights and sites I remember being most astonished by the Pantheon, simply because it is by far the oldest Roman building that is not a ruin and is still in use.

Though the inscription on the pediment suggests it was built by Marcus Agrippa (64/62BC-12BC), the existing structure, apart from the façade, is in fact a rebuilding by the Emperor Hadrian (76AD-138AD) dating from 118AD-128AD.

The interior is a remarkable space, a cylinder surmounted by a coffered dome which rises to a circular oculus, open to the skies.  This is the only source of light – there are no windows – and when it rains the water drains away beneath the floor.

The proportions are mathematically exact:  the footprint forms a square in plan and elevation that equals the height of the oculus, 150 Roman feet (142 Imperial feet or 43.3 metres).  This means that a sphere 142 feet in diameter would fit exactly within the dome.

The name Pantheon indicates that this may have originally been a temple “dedicated to all the gods”.  It survived because in 609AD Pope Boniface IV converted it to a church dedicated to St Mary and the Martyrs.

It has remained a place of Christian worship ever since, and is the burial place of, among others, the painter Raphael (1483-1520), the composer Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) and two Italian monarchs, Victor Emmanuel II (1820-1878, king of Sardinia until 1861 and afterwards the first king of Italy) and his son and successor Umberto I (1844-1900).

Apart from its long history and survival, the Pantheon’s great significance is its influence on Western architecture.  Square – and sometimes circular – Classical buildings with cylindrical interiors and portico entrances are ubiquitous.

The great Italian architect Andrea Palladio produced variations on the theme, such as the church of Il Redentore (1577-92) in Venice, where he was obliged to lengthen the nave and, near Vicenza, his magnificent Villa Capra (designed 1566-7) and the Tempietto Barbaro (designed 1580).

Paris has its Panthéon, built as a church between 1758 and 1790.  There is a Pantheon in the garden at Stourhead, Wiltshire (1756).  The interior of the Marble Saloon at Stowe House, Buckinghamshire (1788) is directly based on the Roman original

Thomas Jefferson, whose own plantation house, Monticello (1772), echoes the Roman Pantheon, designed a more precise reproduction as the Rotunda library at the University of Virginia (1822-6) and his own memorial in Washington DC, designed by John Russell Pope in 1935, follows the same form.

Manchester’s Central Library, designed by Vincent Harris and built 1930-34, follows the same pattern.

There are many such buildings across the world, and they all refer back to the original in Rome.