Pantheon - Rome

The Pantheon was another amazing place to visit.  You don't need to pay to get in and there wasn't a line to get in but someone came up and asked us if we wanted to join a tour and our previous had gone so well we figured why not. Again we learned so much more about the history and architecture than we would have on our own so it really was money well spent.

It's a cool building and as you can see in the pictures below there is hole in the top of the dome to let in the sun and the rain, it's always open.  The pattern around the dome is not just cool looking but it's also functional, have those shapes cut out made the dome weigh less.  Something else that was very clever was that instead of just using scaffolding to get the higher areas they just filled the Pantheon up with dirt.  The clever part was that the left gold and other valuables in the dirt and then the people of the city would go in and take out as much dirt as they could hoping there would be money in there.