Who Built the Pantheon in Rome?
•11 min readATBy AllTrips Rome Editorial Team
Researched and edited by the AllTrips team using official Rome sources, current visitor information and on-the-ground mapping data.
The façade carries one of the most misread inscriptions in the world: M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIUM·FECIT — 'Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, three times consul, made this.' Agrippa did not build the rotunda you walk into. His temple stood on the site more than a century earlier and burned.
The short, defensible answer: Agrippa commissioned the first Pantheon; the present building was begun in the Trajanic–Hadrianic period and completed under Hadrian; and no surviving ancient source names its architect. Everything beyond that is interpretation, and this article marks where the interpretation starts.
The short answer
- Agrippa commissioned the first Pantheon on this site, around 27 BC.
- The building standing today is Trajanic–Hadrianic: begun in the last years of Trajan or the first of Hadrian, and completed under Hadrian.
- The architect is unknown. Apollodorus of Damascus is one attribution among several; no ancient source supports it directly.
- What Agrippa's temple looked like is uncertain. Reconstructions differ on plan and orientation.
Agrippa: the original patron
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa was Augustus's son-in-law, general and chief builder. His public works reshaped the Campus Martius: baths, an aqueduct, and the first Pantheon. The Aqua Virgo he commissioned still feeds the Trevi Fountain.
Agrippa's Pantheon is usually dated to around 27 BC. What it looked like is genuinely unresolved. Excavations beneath the rotunda have produced remains of earlier structures, and different scholars reconstruct them as a rectangular temple, as a building with a different orientation from today's, or as part of a wider precinct. Any confident statement that Agrippa's temple faced south is one reconstruction presented as fact.
Fire and rebuilding
A fire in 80 AD swept this part of the Campus Martius and destroyed Agrippa's building. Domitian rebuilt it. A second fire, reported around 110 AD and attributed to lightning, damaged or destroyed that rebuild.
What happened next is where the sources go quiet. There is no ancient account of a demolition and fresh start, and no basis for saying that Hadrian personally ordered one on his accession in 117. What the physical evidence shows is a major new building rising in the years around and after 110.
Trajanic or Hadrianic?
For most of the twentieth century the rotunda was dated squarely to Hadrian's reign on the basis of brick stamps. More recent study of the stamps — including material dated to Trajan's reign in the lower fabric — has pushed the likely start of construction back to about 113–114 AD, before Hadrian became emperor. That reading is now widely discussed and is why specialists increasingly describe the building as Trajanic–Hadrianic rather than simply Hadrianic.
Two consequences follow. First, the popular line that "all the bricks date to Hadrian" is no longer accurate. Second, "Hadrian commissioned a complete redesign" is an assumption: he may have inherited a project already under way and finished it. What is not in doubt is that the building was completed and dedicated in his reign.
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Official Pantheon Tickets — Musei ItalianiSold by Italy's Ministry of Culture. €7 admission from July 2026. Any online transaction fee is shown at checkout.Musei Italiani Official SiteMusei Italiani is the official Pantheon ticket seller. Third-party products may be tours, hosted-entry products or bundled services — check the exact inclusions before booking.
TiqetsCompare advance Pantheon tickets, audio guides & combo bundlesCheck PricesKlookPantheon tickets & guided tours — cancellation varies by productCheck PricesTrip.comReward credits & frequent traveller dealsCheck PricesHotels near the PantheonStay 2 minutes from Piazza della Rotonda — compare boutique stays on Trip.com.View HotelsCompare all three providers to find the best price for your dates.Why Agrippa's name stayed
Cassius Dio, writing roughly a century after the event, reports that when Hadrian repaired buildings he kept the original builders' names on them rather than his own. That is the ancient evidence. The wording you see quoted around the web as a direct quotation is usually a modern paraphrase of Dio rather than a translation of a single sentence, so treat quotation marks around it with suspicion.
Motive is interpretation. Some historians read it as personal restraint; others as dynastic politics, tying the reign to Augustus's circle and to the legitimacy of the early principate. Both readings are plausible; neither is demonstrated.
Who was the architect?
No surviving Roman text names the Pantheon's architect. Apollodorus of Damascus — the engineer behind Trajan's Forum, Trajan's Markets and the Danube bridge — is the name most often proposed, because he was the leading builder of exactly these years and the Pantheon's construction overlaps his career. That is circumstantial reasoning, not evidence.
The famous story of a quarrel between Hadrian and Apollodorus, in which the architect mocks the emperor's "pumpkin" vaults and later pays for it, comes from Cassius Dio and is treated with caution by modern historians. Even if true, it concerns Hadrian's own architectural work and says nothing about who designed the Pantheon.
The honest formulation: the design came from the imperial building administration at the height of its technical ability, and the individual responsible is unrecorded.
Materials and workforce
Building on this scale drew on the state brick industry, imperial quarries and a large mixed workforce of enslaved and free labour. Brick stamps record the estates and workshops that supplied material and are the main reason the building can be dated at all. Precise headcounts, supplier totals and timelines for individual columns are not recoverable from the surviving evidence, so we do not give them.
The portico columns are monolithic Egyptian granite. The grey shafts are associated with the imperial quarries at Mons Claudianus in the Eastern Desert; the pink-red shafts come from the Aswan quarries. Each was quarried, hauled overland to the Nile, shipped downriver and across the Mediterranean, and moved up the Tiber — a logistical operation that only the imperial state could run.
Later additions and restorers
Septimius Severus and Caracalla recorded a restoration in 202 AD in a second inscription below Agrippa's. Pope Boniface IV consecrated the building as a church in 609. Under Urban VIII in the 1620s the bronze of the portico structure was removed — the destination of that metal is still debated, with cannon production at Castel Sant'Angelo well documented and the Bernini baldachin often asserted but contested.
Two small bell towers added in the seventeenth century were mocked as "ass's ears" and removed in the nineteenth. Each generation altered the surface; the Roman structure underneath is what you go to see.
For the full chronology, read our history of the Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
- L. M. Hetland, 'Dating the Pantheon', Journal of Roman Archaeology 20 (2007) — the brick-stamp argument for a Trajanic start (one influential redating, not an uncontested consensus)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Pantheon, Rome: structure, dating and history
- Platner & Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome — Pantheon (LacusCurtius)
- Cassius Dio, Roman History Book 69 (Hadrian) — English text, LacusCurtius
- Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali — Rome's monuments and conservation
- Direzione Musei nazionali della città di Roma (Ministry of Culture) — official Pantheon page: hours, tickets and access
Facts on this page last checked: August 2026. Prices, opening hours and transport routes in Rome change — always confirm with the official source before your visit.
Continue reading about the Pantheon
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who built the Pantheon in Rome?
The present building was constructed in the early second century AD and completed under Emperor Hadrian. Construction may have started under Trajan, around 113–114. It replaced an earlier temple commissioned by Marcus Agrippa around 27 BC. The architect is not named in any surviving ancient source.
Did Agrippa build the Pantheon you see today?
No. Agrippa's Pantheon stood on the same site from around 27 BC and burned in 80 AD. A rebuilt version burned again around 110 AD. The rotunda standing today belongs to the Trajanic–Hadrianic building programme and retains Agrippa's dedication on the façade.
Who was the architect of the Pantheon?
Unknown. Apollodorus of Damascus, Trajan's leading engineer, is the most frequently proposed candidate, but no ancient text connects him to the Pantheon. Treat the attribution as a scholarly suggestion, not an established fact.
How long did it take to build?
Roughly a decade, on the usual reading of the brick evidence, with work under way by about 113–114 and complete by the 120s. The exact start and finish dates remain debated.
Why is Agrippa's name on the Pantheon?
Cassius Dio, writing a century later, says Hadrian inscribed the original builders' names on buildings he restored. Whether the motive was humility, dynastic politics, or simply convention is a matter of interpretation.