Both the Pantheon and the Parthenon are monuments of ancient Greek culture that carry religious meaning. The Parthenon is older than the Pantheon: the former was built in the period from 447-438 BCE by Iktinos and Kalikrates, while the latter was originally constructed by Publius Aelius Hadrianus in 126 CE. The Pantheon in located in Rome, Italy, while the Parthenon is in Athens, Greece. They are both considered the world and national cultural heritages, and thus are preserved in their original form through restorations. This essay seeks to compare and contrast the two buildings through analysis of their architecture and meaning.
The Pantheon and the Parthenon are examples of ancient stone architecture, each uniquely decorated in their contemporary styles with carved motives and statues. Moreover, they both have 8 columns each as supporters for the pediment and are aligned in a vertical axis. The Parthenon adhered to the principles of the Doric order, including symmetry, morphological simplicity, and building proportional to a human scale, as well as the concepts of constructional perfection and structural rationalism. Later, the Pantheon was inspired by the Parthenon’s exterior design. A pattern of rotated squares, in root-two proportion, appears consistently in the horizontal plan of each measured set is rather apparent in Pantheon’s construction. The massive temples are built in a rectangular shape, proportionally, and with attention to the resonance of ornamentals. Their color schemes and textures are also similar, as both buildings are made of stone, although of different kinds.
The Pantheon and the Parthenon held one purpose: they were temples to gods. The Parthenon was built to praise Athena, while the Pantheon hosted all gods of Roman mythology that derived directly from the Greek one. From there, the amount of similarities stems, such as the shape of the temples, their overall scale, and design. The grandeur of both buildings emphasizes the immense meaning religion had in the lives of ancient Greeks and then Romans. By using stone as a building material and creating intricate designs, both cultures signified their reverence towards the divine figures, as each of the gods ruled over a specific part of people’s everyday lives. In ancient Greek and Roman culture, religion was inseparable from economic, political, and social development. The fact that the Parthenon is dedicated only to Athena also shows how important the goddess was to the people of Athens – a major deity that protected the whole region of Attica.
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