Robert Pezer retweetledi
One of the greatest and oldest special effects in history can be witnessed in Rome today
And it has been playing out, on cue, for nearly 2000 years...
Each year on April 21, the traditional birthday of Rome — the legendary date Romulus founded the city in 753 BC — the midday sun pierces the oculus at the crown of the Pantheon's dome and casts a perfect disk of light that settles squarely on the temple's entrance.
For roughly two minutes and fifty seconds, the bronze doors blaze gold...
At that exact moment, the Emperor would step across the threshold, his body swallowed in sunlight, as though the heavens themselves were handing him the city.
Hadrian's engineers designed the entire building as a cosmos in miniature: the interior is exactly 43.3 metres wide and 43.3 metres tall, meaning a perfect sphere fits inside it.
The Roman senator Cassius Dio wrote that the vaulted roof was meant to resemble the heavens themselves...
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