These Are A Few (or one) of My Favorite Things

By: Amy M.

This is my favorite building in the world. I’ve really thought about this—my roommate and I “collect” buildings from around the world—and we do ridiculous things to see the one’s we’ve always dreamed about. Once, with little more than a few days notice, we packed up our bags, raced like mad to get to the airport, and arrived in Istanbul, Turkey with almost no money and absolutely no idea where we were or where we were going. It was a fantastic trip, and all of this was solely because we wanted to see the Hagia Sophia.

And as marvelous as the Hagia Sophia was, it is not my favorite building. The one pictured above, is.

It’s the Pantheon in Rome—a building most people are very familiar with, and many have visited personally. I love this building for so many reasons, and when I began thinking of the theme “concrete”, this jumped to mind in seconds.

The exterior of the Pantheon is classic, to say the least. Nothing remarkable, but worth looking at, to be sure—or at least it is from this angle. I wish I had a picture of the building from the side, but there is a reason I don’t have one—it’s ugly. It’s nothing more than a wall of concrete with an “almost dome” lumped on top of it, as if a scoop of ice cream were overflowing a square box (gelato, in this case, but I don’t know why anyone would put it in a box….). I digress. The sides of the building are unadorned and ash gray. The front of the building is typical; classic. But the inside is something that (and I try to not sound trite here, but I am going to fail miserably) really cannot be described, but must be experienced. (but there's a picture at the top anyways…perhaps a happy median)

Before the day I walked into the Pantheon, a building had never physically affected me, and none have since. I was among throngs of Italians and tourists walking around the ancient city (a dream of mine for years as I was a classical studies major at university). It was unbearably hot, busy and louder than anything I had ever experienced—not to mention I had made a horrific choice in walking shoes that afternoon and my feet were literally bleeding on the streets of Rome (thank goodness I was wearing red shoes!). Yet as I entered the inside of the Pantheon, none of these nuisances mattered.

There’s a second of darkness as you transition from the suffocating cement pediment of the building into a coffered dome with a small hole in the top allowing a beam of light to get through. As my eyes were drawn upwards to this almost Heavenly shine, my body was plunged into a sickening fit of vertigo. I almost fell. I can’t explain it, but the transition from the chaos of the exterior to the serenity of the interior—the darkness of the pediment and the sun-lit glow of this marble-floored temple left me physically distressed in the very best of ways. I had to sit down for a few minutes to take it all in.

The Romans invented concrete (or at least some form of it), and while I usually assume that concrete is not the most beautiful artistic meduim, I must say they managed to do one heck of a job on this building. To be horrifically trite just once more, this building embodies the spirit of the “you can’t judge a book by its cover” adage. Nothing from the exterior of this cement-covered building can prepare you for what beauty lies inside.

Walk in slowly. Take deep breaths. But if all else fails, rest assured -- there are far worse places in the world in which to fall down.