Michael Wilkins
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Photograph looking up at the Pantheon's portico, its massive granite columns rising steeply into the frame beneath the inscribed pediment reading M AGRIPPA L F COS TERTIVM FECIT, against a clear blue sky.

Portico

Rome, Italy · December 2019

1D X Mark II, 16 millimetres, f 2.8, 1/500 of a second, ISO 100

Agrippa's name is still up there, and he has been dead two thousand years.

The Pantheon from directly beneath the portico, wide enough to let the columns lean into the frame. Each one is a single piece of Egyptian granite, quarried, shipped and stood upright by people with no machinery worth the name. The inscription across the front still credits Agrippa, who built the first version — Hadrian rebuilt the thing entirely and left another man's name on the front, which is a level of restraint nobody has managed since.

Part of Rome, a series.