"Being deep in talk, it so happened that they found themselves near the majestic, pillared portico and huge black rotundity of the Pantheon. It stands almost at the central point of the labyrinthine intricacies of the modern city, and often presents itself before the bewildered stranger when he is in search of other objects. Hilda, looking up, proposed that they should enter.
"They went in, accordingly, and stood in the free space of that great circle, around which are ranged the arched recesses and stately altars, formerly dedicated to heathen gods, but Christianized through twelve centuries gone by. The world has nothing else like the Pantheon. So grand it is, that the pasteboard statues over the lofty cornice do not disturb the effect, any more than the tin crowns and hearts, the dusty artificial flowers, and all manner of trumpery gewgaws, hanging at the saintly shrines. The rust and dinginess that have dimmed the precious marble on the walls; the pavement, with its great squares and rounds of porphyry and granite, cracked crosswise and in a hundred directions, showing how roughly the troublesome ages have trampled here; the grey dome above, with its opening to the sky, as if heaven were looking down into the interior of this place of worship, left unimpeded for prayers to ascend the more freely: all these things make an impression of solemnity, which St. Peter's itself fails to produce.
"'I think,' said Kenyon, 'it is to the aperture in the dome—that great eye, gazing heavenward—that the Pantheon owes the peculiarity of its effect. It is so heathenish, as it were—so unlike all the snugness of our modern civilization! Look, too, at the pavement directly beneath the open space! So much rain has fallen there, in the last two thousand years, that it is green with small, fine moss, such as grows over tombstones in damp English churchyards.'
"'I like better,' replied Hilda, 'to look at the bright, blue sky, roofing the edifice where the builders left it open. It is very delightful, in a breezy day, to see the masses of white cloud float over the opening, and then the sunshine fall through it again, fitfully, as it does now. Would it be any wonder if we were to see angels hovering there, partly in and partly out, with genial, heavenly faces, not intercepting the light, but transmuting it into beautiful colours? Look at that broad, golden beam—a sloping cataract of sunlight—which comes down from the aperture, and rests upon the shrine, at the right hand of the entrance.'"—Hawthorne.
... "'Entrons dans le temple,' dit Corinne: 'vous le voyez, il reste découvert presque comme il l'était autrefois. On dit que cette lumière qui venait d'en haut était l'emblème de la divinité supérieure à toutes les divinités. Les païens ont toujours aimé les images symboliques. Il semble en effet que ce langage convient mieux à la religion que la parole. La pluie tombe souvent sur ces parvis de marbre; mais aussi les rayons du soleil viennent éclairer les prières. Quelle sérénité; quel air de fête on remarque dans cet édifice! Les païens ont divinisé la vie, et les chrétiens ont divinisé la mort: tel est l'esprit des deux cultes.'"—Mad. de Staël.
"In the ancient Pantheon, when the music of Christian chaunts rises among the shadowy forms of the old vanished gods painted on the walls, and the light streams down, not from painted windows in the walls, but from the glowing heavens above, every note of the service echoes like a peal of triumph, and fills my heart with thankfulness."—Mrs. Charles.
"'Where,' asked Redschid Pasha, on his visit to the Pantheon, 'are the statues of the heathen gods?' 'Of course they were removed when the temple was Christianized,' was the natural answer. 'No,' he replied, 'I would have left them standing to show how the true God had triumphed over them in their own house."—Cardinal Wiseman.
"No, great Dome of Agrippa, thou art not Christian! canst not,
Strip and replaster and daub and do what they will with thee, be so!
Here underneath the great porch of colossal Corinthian columns,
Here as I walk, do I dream of the Christian belfries above them;
Or, on a bench as I sit and abide for long hours, till thy whole vast
Round grows dim as in dreams to my eyes, I repeople thy niches,
Not with the martyrs, and saints, and confessors, and virgins, and children,
But with the mightier forms of an older, austerer worship;
And I recite to myself, how
'eager for battle here
Stood Vulcan, here matronal Juno,
And, with the bow to his shoulder faithful,
He who with pure dew laveth of Castaly
His flowing locks, who holdeth of Lycia
The oak forest and the wood that bore him,
Delos' and Patara's own Apollo.'"
A. H. Clough.
Some antiquarians have supposed that the aperture at the top of the Pantheon was originally closed by a huge "Pigna," or pine-cone of bronze, like that which crowned the summit of the mausoleum of Hadrian, and this belief has been encouraged by the name of a neighbouring church being S. Giovanni della Pigna.
The Pantheon has become the burial-place of painters. Raphael, Annibale Caracci, Taddeo Zucchero, Baldassare Peruzzi, Pierino del Vaga, and Giovanni da Udine, are all buried here.