Thomas Jefferson designed it to represent the "authority of nature and power of reason" and modeled it after the Pantheon in Rome.

The collegiate structure, the immediate area around it, and Jefferson's nearby home at Monticello combine to form one of only six modern man-made sites in the United States to be internationally protected and preserved as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO (the other five are the Old City of San Juan, the San Antonio Missions, Independence Hall, the Statue of Liberty, and the architectural works of Frank Lloyd Wright).

In a letter to Thomas Appleton, then the United States consul in Liguria, Jefferson requested pricing for "ten Corinthian capitals for columns of 32 I. diminished diam.

"[7] During the Marquis de Lafayette's grand tour of the United States in 1824 and 1825, the Marquis and former President James Madison dined with Thomas Jefferson in the Dome Room of the unfinished Rotunda at the university's inaugural banquet, and Lafayette toasted Jefferson as the "Father of the University of Virginia".

He went so far as to begin designing a new mechanism with which students would be able to "float" through the air and study heavenly bodies from closer different viewpoints.

A structure called the Annex, also known as "New Hall," was added to the north side of the Rotunda in 1853 to provide additional classroom space needed due to overcrowding.

The students also rescued a portion of the books of the university library from the Dome Room, as well as various scientific instruments from the classrooms in the Annex.

Shortly after the fire, the university faculty recommended a program of rebuilding that called for the reconstruction of the Rotunda and the replacement of the lost classroom space of the Annex with a set of buildings at the south end of the Lawn.

In 1976 during America's Bicentennial, White's Rotunda interior was gutted and rebuilt, at a cost of $2.4 million, to Jefferson's original design.

[13] There is a plaque, on the south side of the Rotunda, listing the names of students and graduates of the university who were killed during the Civil War.

[15] During the renovation, a nineteenth-century chemistry laboratory was found within the walls on the bottom floor featuring a chemical hearth and a sophisticated ventilation system through a series of brick tunnels.