“If you want to under­stand ancient Rome, its archi­tec­ture, its his­to­ry, the sprawl of the Roman Empire, you’ve got to go Rome.” So says archae­ol­o­gist Dar­ius Arya in the video above, mak­ing a fair, if obvi­ous, point. “But you also have to go to the Vesu­vian cities”: that is, the set­tle­ments locat­ed near the vol­cano Mount Vesu­vius on the Gulf of Naples. “You have to go to Her­cu­la­neum. You must go to Pom­peii. Not just because they’re famous, but because of the lev­el of preser­va­tion.” This preser­va­tion was a side effect of the explo­sion of Vesu­vius in 79 AD, which destroyed all life in Her­cu­la­neum and Pom­peii, but also kept the basic struc­tures of both cities intact; vis­it­ing either one today allows us to “get immersed in the world of the Romans.”

It is in Pom­peii that the video’s cre­ator Manuel Bra­vo (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his expla­na­tions of the Great Pyra­mids of Giza and Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi’s dome in Flo­rence) immers­es not just him­self but also us in that world.

He does so with high-res­o­lu­tion trav­el footage, but also with his expla­na­tions of the city’s archi­tec­ture and urban plan­ning, break­ing down the details of every­thing from its grand Forum (“antic­i­pat­ing mod­ern prac­tice by almost 2,000 years” as a “pedes­tri­an-only precinct”) to its com­plex­es of baths, to its ther­mopo­lia (“essen­tial­ly ancient fast-food restau­rants”). Even more reveal­ing are its hum­bler fea­tures, such as the step­ping-stones across streets that allowed cit­i­zens to avoid “the rain­wa­ter, sewage, and ani­mal waste that would accu­mu­late there.”

“Almost every build­ing in Pom­peii has inte­ri­or wall paint­ings, from pri­vate res­i­dences to pub­lic spaces such as baths and mar­kets,” says Bra­vo, and these omnipresent works of art “offer valu­able insights into the every­day life and cul­tur­al val­ues of ancient Roman soci­ety.” (And indeed, they’re still offer­ing new ones: just last month, a redis­cov­ered Pom­pei­ian fres­co showed the world an ancient pre­cur­sor to piz­za.) They also evi­dence the sur­pris­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of trompe-l’œil, where artists cre­ate the illu­sion of walls con­struct­ed from sol­id mar­ble, or even lush out­door spaces. Even the already-grand Domus Romana, the form of hous­ing of choice for afflu­ent Pom­pei­ians, incor­po­rat­ed paint­ings to look grander still. Even once you make it, as the ancients clear­ly knew, you’ve still got to fake it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ruins of Pom­peii

Behold 3D Recre­ations of Pompeii’s Lav­ish Homes — As They Exist­ed Before the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

The Last Morn­ing in Pom­peii & The Night Pom­peii Died: A New Video Series Explores the End of the Doomed Roman City

A New­ly Dis­cov­ered Fres­co in Pom­peii Reveals a Pre­cur­sor to Piz­za

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

In Rome, one does­n’t have to look ter­ri­bly hard to find ancient build­ings. But even in the Eter­nal City, not all ancient build­ings have come down to us in equal­ly good shape, and prac­ti­cal­ly none of them have held up as well as the Pan­theon. Once a Roman tem­ple and now a Catholic church (as well as a for­mi­da­ble tourist attrac­tion), it gives its vis­i­tors the clear­est and most direct sense pos­si­ble of the majesty of antiq­ui­ty. But how has it man­aged to remain intact for nine­teen cen­turies and count­ing when so much else in ancient Rome’s built envi­ron­ment has been lost? Ancient-his­to­ry Youtu­ber Gar­rett Ryan explains that in the video above.

“Any answer has to begin with con­crete,” Ryan says, the Roman vari­ety of which “cured incred­i­bly hard, even under­wa­ter. Sea water, in fact, made it stronger.” Its strength “enabled the cre­ation of vaults and domes that rev­o­lu­tion­ized archi­tec­ture,” not least the still-sub­lime dome of the Pan­theon itself.

Anoth­er impor­tant fac­tor is the Roman bricks, “more like thick tiles than mod­ern rec­tan­gu­lar bricks,” used to con­struct the arch­es in its walls. These “helped to direct the gar­gan­tu­an weight of the rotun­da toward the mason­ry ‘piers’ between the recess­es. And since the arch­es, made almost entire­ly of brick, set much more quick­ly than the con­crete fill in which they were embed­ded, they stiff­ened the struc­ture as it rose.”

This has­n’t kept the Pan­theon’s floor from sink­ing, cracks from open­ing in its walls, but such com­par­a­tive­ly minor defects could hard­ly dis­tract from the spec­ta­cle of the dome (a feat not equaled until Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi came along about 1300 years lat­er). “The archi­tect of the Pan­theon man­aged hor­i­zon­tal thrust — that is, pre­vent­ed the dome from spread­ing or push­ing out the build­ing beneath it – by mak­ing the wall of the rotun­da extreme­ly thick and embed­ding the low­er third of the dome in their mass.” Even the ocu­lus at the very top strength­ens it, “both by obvi­at­ing the need for a struc­tural­ly dan­ger­ous crown and through its mason­ry rim, which func­tioned like the key­stone of an arch.” We may no longer pay trib­ute to the gods or emper­ors to whom it was first ded­i­cat­ed, but as an object of archi­tec­tur­al wor­ship, the Pan­theon will sure­ly out­last many gen­er­a­tions to come.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

How to Make Roman Con­crete, One of Human Civilization’s Longest-Last­ing Build­ing Mate­ri­als

A Street Musi­cian Plays Pink Floyd’s “Time” in Front of the 1,900-Year-Old Pan­theon in Rome

How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Sto­ry of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi and the Duo­mo in Flo­rence

The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved: Why Has Roman Con­crete Been So Durable?

Build­ing The Colos­se­um: The Icon of Rome

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

In the New York of old, “one entered the city like a god. One scut­tles in now like a rat.” When he wrote those words, archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an Vin­cent Scul­ly issued what has end­ed up as the defin­i­tive judg­ment of Penn­syl­va­nia Sta­tion. Or rather, of the Penn­syl­va­nia Sta­tions: the majes­tic orig­i­nal build­ing from 1910, as well as its util­i­tar­i­an replace­ment that has stood in Mid­town Man­hat­tan since 1968. But then, the word “stood” does­n’t quite apply to the lat­ter, since it resides entire­ly under­ground, below Madi­son Square Gar­den. Over the years, New York­ers have come more and more open­ly to resent the Penn Sta­tion they have and lament the Penn Sta­tion they lost, which archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er intro­duces to us in the Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above.

“A con­jec­tur­al recon­struc­tion of Impe­r­i­al Rome’s Baths of Cara­calla of 212–216 AD,” writes New York Review of Books archi­tec­ture crit­ic Mar­tin Filler, the orig­i­nal Penn Sta­tion con­sti­tut­ed “a har­mo­nious syn­the­sis of two diver­gent and sup­pos­ed­ly irrec­on­cil­able archi­tec­tur­al approach­es, the Clas­si­cal and the indus­tri­al.”

It was com­mis­sioned by the Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road, which in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry was “the country’s largest busi­ness enter­prise, with a bud­get sec­ond only to that of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment,” writes the New York­er’s William Finnegan, and which at that time had a for­mi­da­ble engi­neer­ing prob­lem to solve: “Its tracks end­ed, like those of every rail­road approach­ing New York from the west, in New Jer­sey, on the banks of the Hud­son Riv­er. In 1900, nine­ty mil­lion pas­sen­gers were oblig­ed to trans­fer to fer­ries to reach Man­hat­tan.”

To run the Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road­’s tracks into the cen­ter of New York City required dig­ging a set of tun­nels under the Hud­son, where, says one his­to­ri­an on PBS’ Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence doc­u­men­tary on the rise and fall of Penn Sta­tion, “nobody thought tun­nels could be built. It’s almost as though they were going to go to the moon.” The tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ment was matched by the aes­thet­ic: “Its main wait­ing room, pan­eled in Ital­ian traver­tine, with flut­ed columns and cof­fered ceil­ings a hun­dred and fifty feet high, was the world’s largest room,” Finnegan writes. “The train shed was equal­ly grand, with arch­ing steel gird­ers, stag­gered mez­za­nines, and glass-block floors that let sun­light through to the tracks. ” Like oth­er major urban rail ter­mi­nals of its era, writes Tony Judt, Penn Sta­tion “spoke direct­ly and delib­er­ate­ly to the com­mer­cial ambi­tions and civic self-image of the mod­ern metrop­o­lis.”

By the mid-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry, how­ev­er, trains were fac­ing aggres­sive com­pe­ti­tion from both the pri­vate car and the air­plane, which dis­placed their sta­tions from the cen­ter of mod­ern life. “Between 1955 and 1975,” Judt writes, “a mix of anti­his­tori­cist fash­ion and cor­po­rate self-inter­est saw the destruc­tion of a remark­able num­ber of ter­mi­nal sta­tions.” But prospects for rail of one kind or anoth­er in Amer­i­ca have looked up in recent years, and “we are no longer embar­rassed by the roco­co or neo-Goth­ic or Beaux-Arts excess­es of the great rail­way sta­tions of the indus­tri­al age and can see such edi­fices instead as their design­ers and con­tem­po­raries saw them: as the cathe­drals of their age.” Hence, in New York, the preser­va­tion of Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion — as well as the bit­ter and pro­tract­ed strug­gle (cov­ered exten­sive­ly in Finnegan’s New York­er piece) over whether and how to turn the unloved Penn Sta­tion into a cathe­dral of our age.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Immer­sive Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of New York City’s Icon­ic Grand Cen­tral Ter­mi­nal

An Archi­tect Breaks Down the Design of New York City Sub­way Sta­tions, from the Old­est to Newest

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

A Sub­way Ride Through New York City: Watch Vin­tage Footage from 1905

Famous Archi­tects Dress as Their Famous New York City Build­ings (1931)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.