Pantheon Small-Group Tour Meeting at the Minerva Obelisk

The meeting point is the obelisk in Piazza della Minerva, number 42, and the coordinator holds a red Tix & Tours sign. Arrive fifteen minutes before the start for check-in. That obelisk is worth a moment on its own. It is Egyptian, it is small as obelisks go, and it stands on the back of a marble elephant carved to Bernini's design, which has been facing the Pantheon since the seventeenth century. The tour then goes in with reserved entry. A guide takes the group through the architecture, the sculptures set into the niches, and the tomb of Raphael, and explains the design decisions that produced a room with those proportions. The group stays small, which matters here more than in most places. The Pantheon is a single circular chamber with hard surfaces on every side; forty people talking make a guide inaudible, and the building is quieter than any commentary about it.