Pantheon

[Octane]

All,

The Pantheon, one of the best-preserved buildings of its time.

The original temple was built in 27 BC by Marcus Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus and was dedicated to the planetary gods. The temple was later used as a Catholic Church.

The dome is one of the finest architectural achievements of all time. The oculus in the middle lets light through, as can be seen in the photograph. It's pretty interesting how they built it -- the concrete gets lighter towards the oculus, thereby dispersing the weight.

Many Italian kings are buried in the Pantheon, as well as Raphael.

Two frame mosaic; 1/8s, iso100, evaluative metering, 18mm (very soft at the edges). Something has gone awry with the final JPG for web, the colours are desaturated, even though I converted the image from Adobe RGB to sRGB.

Slightly higher resolution found here (http://users.tpg.com.au/octane2/pantheon.html).

Comments and critique are welcome.

Regards,
Humayun

[gary]

Wow!!!

Fabulous beam of light!
"Beam me up, Scotty". :)

Beautiful colours. Once again, you have excelled yourself! :thumbsup:

Best Regards

Gary

[Kevnool]

WoW factor again H.
Cannot fault this.
Cheers Kev.

[Quark]

What an amazing piece of architecture, it would be interesting to be able to spend enough time there to see how the lighting effect changes between full Sun and cloud, also what the effect would be after dark with illumination from the Moon. Maybe such a situation would be perfect for a HDR imaging session.

Humayun, whenever I see a new post of yours, I have grown to expect something different and very special and that trend continues.

Regards
Trevor

[gary]

I'll second that!

Best Regards

Gary

[astroron]

What workmanship, and to consider it was built so long ago and still looks beautiful :eyepop:
Well done as usual.
You must have photographed half of Europe:lol:

[iceman]

Stunning image, just beautiful. Top stuff H!

[Tilt]

I love your work Humayun, very pleasing.

Michael

[StephenM]

Another really great image, Humayun!
Well done.

Cheers,
Stephen

[MrB]

Awesome.
I spent considerable time in there trying to get a decent shot, had no tripod so was leaning against anything I could find to try and stay steady!
I failed.

According to a tourist info sign nearby outside, we are fortunate it is still there, many have tried to reduce it to rubble.
Infact, parts of it have been demolished and all the external marble is missing (raw brickwork now). Demolition was stopped by someone famous, tho I don't remember who. :rolleyes:

[RB]

Beautiful capture H, nice intricate detail and the sunlight gives it a lovely feel.

[Octane]

Gary,

Thank you, sir. Also, that light beam isn't an exaggeration -- that's what I saw (or very close to it!). :)



Thanks, Kev. Much appreciated.



Trevor,

Unfortunately, I didn't have much time in there as I wanted to get as much sight seeing as I could in the little time that I had in Rome. Perhaps next time?

Thank you so much for the very, very kind compliment.



Ron,

Yeah, that roof just never ceases to amaze me.

Thanks!



Mike,

Thanks, as always. :)



Michael,

Thanks, so much!



Stephen,

Cheers!



Simon,

Cheers! I shot these handheld, as I just couldn't be bothered with taking the tripod out. There was a lot of people there so wanted to quickly snap and put the camera away and blend into the crowd.

That's interesting about wanting to demolish it. I have no idea why they'd try to remove such an iconic bit of architecture?



Andrew,

Thanks, mate. :)



Thank you all. I receive great joy in sharing my terrestrial work with you. I am really hanging to get back into sharing my real passion -- astrophotography. It's been too long.

Regards,
Humayun

[MrB]

Oh it wasn't in modern times, way way back. Around the exterior you can see vestiges of walls, floors and doorways etc.
The holes in the external walls are where the marble was keyed in.

From wikipedia:
Much fine external marble has been removed over the centuries, and there are capitals from some of the pilasters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilaster) in the British Museum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum). Two columns were swallowed up in the medieval buildings that abbutted the Pantheon on the east and were lost. In the early seventeenth century, Urban VIII Barberini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Urban_VIII) tore away the bronze ceiling of the portico, and replaced the medieval campanile with the famous twin towers built by Maderno (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Maderno), which were not removed until the late nineteenth century.[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome#cite_note-4) The only other loss has been the external sculptures, which adorned the pediment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pediment) above Agrippa's inscription. The marble (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble) interior and the great bronze (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze) doors have survived, although both have been extensively restored.