Strange creatures lurk in the public fountains:

And every surface is an opportunity for embellishment:

People looked very different in ancient times:

But not lions, they haven’t changed:

:)

There were giants!:

Bits of them, just laying around the place:

There’s a Hole in Reality through which We Can Look if We Wish:

Huge doughnuts to us humans, but mere Cheerios to the giants of antiquity:

great pictures!

I’ve always wondered though: is it really loud and damp and unpleasant in the Pantheon when it rains? I mean, the oculus is v v pretty & and I’m sure there’s a drain in the floor, but still...

No drain in the floor! The floor is convex, so the water drains to the sides and out the door supposedly. Because it was raining (and had been raining for days) when we were there, there was a big roped off puddle under the oculus.

What is awesome is how well lighted the oldest buildings are, with only the natural light of the gloomiest day.

love those lions

hmm, the curved floor design never occurred to me, so I guess I’m not cut out to be an ancient Roman architect. google sez it does have a drainage system, but it must be well-hidden so’s not to spoil the beauty of it all.

While there are holes for drainage right under the oculus, the curve may also have helped to encourage dispersion and hence evaporation: at any rate it is remarkable how quickly the floor dries off even after a thunderstorm.

There was a system set up in the way the floor curved so that when it rained, it would wash the floor and then flow towards the walls of the Pantheon and then drain out through a special drain.

I found some photos of the drain holes! They don’t seem to be directly under the oculus (it’s a big circle of dark reddish/purple-ish marble), but in the squares leading down the sloping floor. Four little holes per big square of floor is not much!

As a modern westerner, I expected a manhole sized drain grate, minimum.

Crazy-busy shopping day at the Piazza di Spagna. Shops would only let a few people in at a time, and people would line up outside each door, waiting to be let in to fondle the merchandise:

Or, they’d just hang out on the steps, eating roasted chestnuts:

Here’s the shopping street—people as far as you could see: