Chapter22
The Pantheon Provides a Place to Prove Oneself
Meanwhile, in the Piazza della Rotunda
“Oh, how I wish I had brought my sketchbook,” Diana lamented, her gloved hands gripping the edge of the dark marble fountain in front of the Pantheon.In the middle was a carved marble base upon which the granite tower was mounted.She leaned forward in an effort to make out the hieroglyphs that decorated theObelisco Macuteo.
“Careful, my sweet, or you’re going to find yourself soaking wet,” Randy said from where he stood next to her, sure she was about to fall into the basin of water.
She glanced up at him, her eyes suddenly darkening.“What do you have in mind?”she asked, arching a teasing brow.
Randy inhaled slowly, realizing how his words had been interpreted.“Oh.”He glanced around.“Well, if there was a niche...or a reasonably private place, I would gladly see to your immediate pleasure,” he whispered.
Tittering, Diana reddened at hearing his claim.“Later.When we’re in that wonderful bed,” she whispered in reply.
“I’ll be ready,” he promised.His gaze went up the obelisk.“Is this one from Egypt?”he asked.
“Indeed.This once stood in the temple of Amun-Re in Heliopolis,” she replied.“And there are two cartouches up there,” she added, pointing with excitement to the very top.“It’s probably Rameses the Second.”She allowed a huff.“There is just so much to see here, and,” she waved to the others who wandered about the piazza.“They have no idea of the history through which they walk.”
“We’ll come back, of course,” he assured her.“We have at least a month,” he reminded her.
“Can we go inside?”Barbara asked, pausing in front of the fountain to enjoy the cooler air.
“We should be able to, even if it is a Catholic church now,” Will commented.“The artist Raphael is buried here.Wait until you see the oculus in the ceiling.”
Barbara inhaled softly.“You’ve already been here, haven’t you?”
He nodded.“HMS Greenwichput into port near here on more than one occasion,” he replied.“Never for very long, though, so I appreciate we now have the time to see it all at leisure.”He offered his arm and the two made their way past the columns of the portico and to the entry.
Despite their size and weight, the twenty-five-foot high bronze doors opened easily, and the group filed into the cella and through to the rotunda.
Almost immediately, everyone craned their necks in an effort to study the dome above them.
“How high is it up to that hole in the ceiling?”Randy asked.
“One-hundred-and-forty-two feet,” Donald replied.“The same distance as this room’s diameter.”
“What happens when it rains?”Barbara asked.
“There are drains in the floor to capture the water,” Nicoletta replied, using a gloved hand to point out one of them.
“It feels so much larger inside than it looked from the outside,” Helen remarked.
“Indeed,” Tom agreed.He pointed to the niches located around the perimeter.“I take it those didn’t always hold Christian statues.”
“Those used to display statues of the Roman deities,” Donald confirmed.“Including an ivory statue of Minerva sculpted by the Greek artist Phidias, and we know there were statues of Venus, Jupiter, and Mars.”
“Pliny the Elder wrote about the decorations in hisNatural History,” David remarked, his gaze darting about the interior of the rotunda.“The original capitals of these columns were made of Syracusan bronze, but they were obviously looted,” he added sadly.
“Two of the original marble capitals are in the British Museum,” Will commented.“As for the rest?—”
“‘Decorated by Diogenes of Athens, and the caryatides, by him, which form the columns of that temple, are looked upon as masterpieces of excellence’,” Diana quoted fromThe Natural History.
Donald glanced over at Randy, who merely shrugged.“She remembers everything she reads,” he whispered.
“Diogenes also did the statues up on the roof,” Vittoria stated.“And one of Cleopatra’s pearls was cut in half so that each half?—”
“‘Might serve as pendants for the ears of Venus, in the Pantheon at Rome’,” Diana finished for her, her delight evident in finding someone who was familiar with the passage.
