Giorno Tre, Prima Parte: the Pantheon

Arriving at the Pantheon in style, in a hansom cab. Well, someone did. Is wasn't me.

My third day in Rome and the first without an organized tour. Scratch that. I did sign up for one guided tour, but that is just a 45-minute English-language tour of the Pantheon.

It never rains in Rome this time of year. But it was a rainy morning in Rome. 

Those stones are even more slippier when wet. I hoofed it to the Pantheon (using my own hooves, not those of the horse and a hansom cab) and it was a surprisingly quick walk.

It too has an obelisk! Rome is lousy with obelisks and I approve. Unfortunately, when viewing the Pantheon from the front, you cannot see its most prominent feature very quickly. Let's look at it from the inside:

The most distinctive feature of Rome's Pantheon is the massive dome. The building is nearly 1800 years old. That includes what Rome bills as the world's oldest dome.

The Pantheon is -- far and way -- the best preserved building from the historic period of ancient Rome.

The interior has been redecorated. The old bronze from the structure built by the Emperor Hadrian (most famous for his wall along the English/Scottish border) is long gone, repurposed for many purposes many times over.

Pantheon means "all the gods" and this was once a temple to all of the Roman gods. Now it is a church to the one God.

The niches were once filled with statues of the Roman gods. Jupiter. Mars. Venus. They're gone. Replaced by religious iconography.

The Pantheon also houses the tombs of a few prominent inhabitants of the Rome of the more modern era. The artist Raphael is buried here. He died while painting the great works of art in the Raphael rooms in what is now the Vatican Museums. And here is the tomb of the first king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel.

He was the first king of a unified Italy since the fall of the western Roman Empire. And yet his name, officially, is Victor Emmanuel II. What's up with that? He reigned from 1861 until his death in 1878. He was succeeded by his son, the second king of Italy, Umberto I. Italy had only four kings until it reverted once again into a republic. Yet they used only two names: Victor Emmanuel II, Umberto I, Victor Emmanuel III, and Umberto II. Umberto I also is buried in the Pantheon, 180 degrees across from his father.

The Pantheon is used for Catholic mass on Saturdays and Sundays. It is closed to the public when mass is in session.

What was cool about the fact that it was raining is that some of the rain does come through the "oculus," or "eye" of the dome. 

There even are holes in the floor for drainage. There is four of them.

Which god was in this niche before?

I don't know. But the Pantheon is one single room, so a 45-minute guided tour was enough to see it all and learn everything about its backstory that I am capable of retaining. Time to move on to my next scheduled stop.

The crowd outside got bigger when I was inside. The tourism drought most definitely is over in Rome.

I wasn't very far from the Pantheon when I saw the giant landmark that would guide me to my destination. Straight ahead, just down the street ...

It's the gigantic Victor Emmanuel monument, off in a short distance, between the buildings on either side of the street (Via Del Corso, if you're keeping score). And we were just talking about him. My next stop is supposed to be behind that monstrosity.