Pantheon

The Pantheon, Rotunda Interior

The Pantheon of Aelyria Prime is a glorious marble building that serves as the majestic temple to the Gods. Located to the east of the Forum, the Pantheon is considered the most sacred civic place in the Realm.

Originally commissioned by Empress Michelle, the then-austere temple was rebuilt by Emperor Constantine shortly after her death to honor divinity and like all structures designed by Ancient Aelyrians, the Pantheon set a standard for audacious architecture that has stood the test of time. The innovative design and masterful architecture exhibit a feat in engineering that has few peers in the world, though the identity of its chief architect remains a mystery to this day. Some speculate that Emperor Constantine himself designed the structure, while others suggest that perhaps the Emperor had the original architect executed so that no structure like it could ever be designed or commissioned again.

The Pantheon is administered not by any church or temple, but instead by the Abbey, an unaffiliated monastery of curator-monks devoted to the preservation of the Pantheon as a holy site for all Aelyrian people to enjoy.

Dome Construction of the Pantheon

Design

The Rotunda, or huge interior space capped by a magnificent domed ceiling, was the heart of the Pantheon's design. At its center, the Rockstone concrete dome rises 150 feet. It spans exactly the same length across without any support from columns or buttresses. Once derided by Advisor Daniel Hardy as "excessively ambitious", the Pantheon today is the largest unsupported dome structure in existence and left one of the most significant imprints upon the Capital City, using classic brick construction design but using gleaming marble and exquisite granite. Before Constantine's engineers could begin to pour the concrete onto the ceilings, they needed to figure out how to shift the weight of the dome away from the center. Otherwise, when they removed the wooden framework holding the domed ceiling in place, 3,000 tones of concrete would collapse under its own weight.

Construction

The Construction of the Pantheon

The Pantheon's engineers developed several radical solutions to make sure its ceiling -- and the Emperor's reputation -- would not come crashing down. First, they built a solid base of walls twenty feet thick to act as a base for the ceiling. Next, as the ceiling rose towards its apex, they mixed in lighter materials with the cement and poured a progressively thinner layer into it. In the Dome, construction workers used a common technique -- inserting common jugs, or amphora -- to displace some of the concrete and lighten the load. To ensure the ceiling was even lighter, the builders molded recessed panels called coffers into the ceiling which served two ingenious purposes: aesthetics, that is, that they allowed the surface of the domed area to be decorated, while at the same time reducing the amount of concrete necessary to complete the dome itself. A final weight-shedding alteration immediately became the Pantheon's most distinctive feature: the Oculus, a thirty-foot wide opening in the center of the ceiling. The Oculus eliminates the stress of heavy concrete at the dome's weakest point, while also illuminating the interior just as the suns light the planet.

For subjects entering this interior space, the religious feeling of the building is known to overwhelm visitors with raw emotions and stunning awe.

The Oculus of the Pantheon

Controversy

The Pantheon's Engineers strove for perfection, and almost achieved it. The Front Portico, the columnated gateway serving as its entrance, connecting with the Rotunda offers an unparalleled experience for visitors as they cross through an immense temple-palace into a open space dedicated to all of the Gods, inclusive of the deities of the Realm. Since its construction, the Pantheon has stood as an engineering enigma: the identity of the architect remaining a mystery, scholars and historians are often left to speculate as to who truly designed the Pantheon -- whether it was Ancient Aelyrian architectural knowledge, or the common sense ambitions of the adaptive mortal races.