I went to 5 pm mass at the Pantheon today.  I observed several things there.  When I arrived, the scene was a typical one: hundreds of tourists (mostly American) milling around, looking up.  It was loud, everyone was talking - I could make out several different languages as I made my way towards the few rows of pews.  I found a spot in the pews amongst the tourists resting there.  As I sat with Billy waiting for mass to begin, I looked at the bank of pews to my right.  There I saw a young girl (maybe 16 years old) and her friend.  She was brushing her hair.  At first I took it as just another strange occurrence (of which I have had many here in Rome).  After she finished brushing her hair, she knelt down on the kneeler and had her friend take a picture of her "praying" in the Pantheon.  Good picture, right?

A lot of people forget that the Pantheon is a church.  It was a temple to all the Roman Gods before it became a church, and it is a feat of structural engineering.  These things often overshadow the fact that it is considered holy ground.  But today, I saw it transformed from landmark to holy space.  A few minutes after the girl had taken her picture (received her false token), several women came through the crowd and started clearing the tourists out for mass.  They asked us three times if we were here for mass.  I was amazed at how quickly everyone was herded out and made to stand behind barriers directly outside the entrance.  I could hear the immense mob outside in the piazza, but it had become significantly more quiet inside.  It was then that I noticed two things: there were only 25 people or so there for mass, and the space is much more impressive when it is empty.  It was depressing to see that out of the 400 or so people packed into the Pantheon earlier, only a handful had stayed to celebrate mass.  But at the same time, I got to see one of the most dynamic spatial transitions in the world.  During the mass the Pantheon felt completely different.  The smell of incense gave me mystic feel while every once in a while I would look up to see the sky slowly darkening through the oculus.  The cantor didn't even need a microphone for his voice to be heard throughout the entire space.  And all the time the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world loomed above, glorious.  The mass ended and I walked past the swarm of yelling tourists, a smirk on my face.