Pantheon, Rome
Completion of the Pantheon in its present form
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The façade credits a man who had been dead roughly 150 years by the time the surviving dome was finished.
A decade of work, not a year
Around 125–126, work on the Pantheon's portico, fittings and dedication likely reached completion in Rome's Campus Martius.
The official reconstruction range is 118–125. Revised brick-stamp analysis instead favours a project running from about 113/114 to 125/126, and other modern summaries put completion or dedication as late as 128. No exact dedication date is preserved.
Trajan probably started it
Current archaeological interpretation commonly assigns the beginning of the present rebuilding to late in Trajan's reign and its completion to Hadrian, rather than treating it as an exclusively Hadrianic project.
The building it replaced had been damaged in the fires of 80 and 110.
43.3 metres across, 43.3 metres high
The finished building joined a traditional columned portico to the enormous concrete rotunda and dome that substantially survive today. Interior width and height are the same figure, so a sphere of that diameter would fit inside the rotunda.
Rain enters through an oculus about nine metres wide and leaves through 22 holes in the floor.
The façade kept a dedicatory inscription naming Marcus Agrippa as builder, despite the standing structure being a second-century reconstruction.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited Date disputed
How this was checked
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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~125.
What the sources leave uncertain
- Construction was a multi-year process, not an event confined to the year 125.
- The official site gives 118–125, while revised brick-stamp analysis favors a Trajanic start around 113–115, portico completion in 124–125, and finishing or dedication around 125–126.
- Other modern summaries place completion or dedication as late as 128. No exact dedication date is securely preserved.
- The building’s original ritual function and the precise division of responsibility among Trajan, Hadrian, and their architects remain debated.