Pantheon Entry Ticket with an Audio Guide to Its Roman and Christian Lives

Admission is booked before you arrive, so the queue at the ticket office is not part of the day. The audio guide runs on your own device and you set the pace: stop it, replay a section, walk the perimeter twice. Its subject is the building's two careers. For roughly five centuries this was a Roman temple, rebuilt after a fire under Trajan and finished under Hadrian between 125 and 128. Then, on 13 May of a year the sources still do not agree on, it was consecrated as a Christian church, and that is the reason it is still standing: the temples that stayed temples were quarried for their marble. The commentary covers the architecture as well. The dome is the largest ever built in unreinforced concrete, and it manages that by getting thinner as it rises, from 5.90 metres at the base to 1.50 at the rim of the oculus, with lighter aggregate towards the top. The coffers help less than people assume. Legends come with a building this old, and the guide takes those on too. Enough of them are false that having someone sort them out is worth the listening time.