Pantheon Audio Tour with the Access Codes Sent the Night Before

The codes for the audio commentary arrive by email the night before the visit, so the downloading and the sorting out happen at the hotel rather than in the square. Two pieces of advice come with this booking and both are worth taking. Come early, because the room fills up and a crowd changes what it feels like. And dress as you would for a church, because the Pantheon is one: it was consecrated in the seventh century and has never stopped holding services. Inside, the dome is the reason people stop walking. Light comes through the oculus at its centre in a single shaft and moves across the marble as the day goes on, which is the effect photographs never catch. The interior is worked in marble and granite, and the tomb of Raphael is set into the wall among the side chapels. The building has been in continuous use for nineteen centuries, first as a temple and then as a church, and that is why it looks the way it does rather than looking like a ruin.