Pantheon

The Pantheon ( /ˈpænθiːən/ or US /ˈpænθiːɒn/; Latin: Pantheon, from Greek: Πάνθειον, an adjective meaning "to every god") is a building in Rome, Italy, commissioned by Marcus Agrippa as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome, and rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian in about 126 AD. The ancient Roman writer Cassius Dio speculated that the name comes either from the statues of so many gods placed around this building or from the resemblance of the dome to the heavens. Since the French Revolution, when the church of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, France was deconsecrated and turned into the secular monument called the Panthéon of Paris, the generic term pantheon has sometimes been applied to other buildings in which illustrious dead are honored or...