Beneath the porch are huge bronze doors, 24 feet (7m) high, the earliest large examples of this type.

The Pantheon is remarkable for its size, its construction, and its design. The dome was the largest built until modern times, measuring about 142 feet (43m) in diameter and rising to a height of 71 feet (22m) above its base.

The Pantheon has been an inspiration for architects and architecture. It is renowned as one of the most celebrated edifices in the world. How right this is can be seen by leafing through the illustrations of any standard history of architecture, noting how domed rotundas with temple-front porches appear. These progeny of the

Pantheon are ubitiquitous, the result more than anything of an all-encompassing imagery expressing universality that made it possible for the building to be meaningful in different ways in different historical periods. It has always been a symbol of Rome, and of things Roman as they have been variously conceived over the centuries. Again and again it has provided inspiration in response to needs unknown when it was built. Unlike the vast palaces, the imperial fora, and the other stupendous works of the Caesars, it has continued to stand.

The idea also spread widely that the Pantheon was a shrine for national worthies where the effigies would be displayed; it seems to have originated in northern Europe. By 1776 busts of famous men, especially men connected with the arts, began to be placed in the Pantheon in Rome. In the Capitol in Washington there is a Hall of Statuary, formerly the House of Representatives, a room of the half Pantheon type, next to the central rotunda, that contains images of famous men from the several states.

During the last two phases, the Neo-Classic and the modern, the domed rotunda with a temple-front facade became common in all western architecture. In 1682, Antoine Desgodetz (1653-1728), who was sent to Rome from Paris with the specific assignment of measuring certain ancient buildings, published accurate measured drawings of the Pantheon.

As early as 1717, Lord Burlington designed a Pantheon, called a bagno, for the park of his estate at Chiswick near London. Palladio inspired it, for Palladio was Burlington's passion. Less derivative architects used classical architecture more freely. James Wyatt (1747-1813), for example, in his Pantheon in London of 1770-72, placed the form of a coffered dome some fifty feet in diameter over a plan of a distinctly Byzantine kind. It was an immense success and made Wyatt's name.

In the later Roman Empire Roman architects continued to explore the exciting potential of vaulted buildings, which were common east and west. Rethinking the problem brought some spectacular creative successes, while the design of certain building types, notably mausolea, remained conservative as late as the fifth century. Although temple building declined in the late antiquity, there are examples in the Pantheon manner, muted in grandeur but of unmistakable origin.

The rotunda is sixty Roman feet in diameter, and the seven niches of the Pantheon appear, though of rather different shapes. An important change has taken place, however, for the transverse niches and the apse, expanded to a greater size in relation to the volume of the whole than at the Pantheon, project beyond the exterior wall of the rotunda.

Round tombs, were common in the Roman world. By the middle of the second century, all circular, domed buildings were charged with the imperial concept the Pantheon so eloquently expressed, and the Pantheon idea came to be used for mausolea, especially imperials ones, and also for heroa (shrines for the dead). The round solid kind of mausoleum built for Augustus and Hadrian was joined with the Pantheon's powerful imagery of the heavens and the cosmos.

Another, somewhat smaller version was built in Rome quite early in the fourth century, the so-called temple of Romulus beside the ancient Sacred Way. It may have been the tomb of a young prince who died in 309, but nobody really knows. There was no room for an axial forecourt, but the building was set back a little from the street, its entrance focused at the center of an incurving wall more or less tangential to the rotunda, a typical late antique device. Above the unpedimented frame around the bronze doors rises a flat, thin, unfeatured reminiscence of the Pantheon's intermediate block. Above that, at the base of the dome, are two step-rings (the little cupola or lantern is not ancient).

Some common words found in the essay are:
Temple Ostia, Rome Roman, Severus Caracalla, Renaissance Renaissance, Nevertheless Pantheon, Medica Rome, Empire Roman, Rome Dating, Arthur's Oon, Paris Opera, domed rotunda, fourth century, round temple ostia, temple ostia, pantheon idea, feet diameter, pantheon temple, interior diameter, ancient buildings, intermediate block, round temple, measuring ancient buildings, feet interior diameter, cut stone dome, pantheon temple asklepios,
Approximate Word count = 3167
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)