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Confessions from the inner Pantheon |
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written
by joeplumb / 10.24.2005 |
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Part 1: |
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The Pantheon reminds me of an old lady; not the sweat old grandma with the apple pie on the window sill, or the crazy old lady who screams out her ramblings, or even the quiet one who sits in the corridor of the old folks home, the memories of her life thinning as her hair did long ago. If the Pantheon were a person, I would see it as an amalgam of each of these. She would have the compassion of an English nun and wraith of a hungry pit bull.
When I usually think of a building, even a monumental building, I tend to think of it as remaining constant. I have recently become very familiar with the Coliseum, I walk by it in the morning, while Romans board the near by bus to work, and at night, when the only people who stand around are the sometimes inebriated and always photo hungry tourists. The thing is, the Coliseum remains the same, a behemoth towering over the lives of mere mortals.
The Pantheon isn’t like this at all. It has mood swings and temper tantrums. On a sunny day the giant oculus forms a golden beam of light that slowly meanders its way around the floor, as if the eye of God himself is inspecting the people who have come to worship him. When standing in this light, one can only feel as if the Almighty was reaching out, his arm the brilliant rays which lays oh so gently on the body.
If there was ever an experience to rival that of the Pantheon on a sunny day it must surely be the horror felt in the same place during a storm. It starts out gently; the lifeless blanket of grey an ominous warning of what to come. Soon rain starts to fall, slowly at first; almost amusing the way puddles begin to form. But soon the noise rises, as the pounding of rain on the floor is echoed by the acoustics of the dome overhead. Lightning seen through the oculus is a sight to behold, gripping all with fear and awe, only to be repeated a second later at the thunder crashes like a tsunami, back and forth against the ancient brick. This out lashing of nature does not detour the masses, however, as the Pantheon serves to shelter those caught in the rain. It’s as if she’s caught you stealing the apple pie from her window and is holding you in place while she lectures you.
There’s one more side of the Pantheon that’s harder to see. If you go right when it opens, just as the sun is beginning to rise over the orange rooftops of Rome, you get a very different picture through the oculus. Through the opening you see just a fraction of the morning sky. There is no bright light yet, no rain to pollute her sanctity. It seems as if she is almost oblivious to the world, once again only a building, not the instrument of God that she might seem at other times.
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