A Trip Back in Time to Ancient Rome

The Smithsonian magazine recently had an article entitled "Rome Reborn" in the July issue. Rome Reborn is a full-size, real-time digital model of Rome circa A.D. 320:

"The entire city is modeled in three dimensions, and users can "fly" through, and over, the ancient city's winding streets, broad plazas, forums-and even its most famous monuments."

Researchers hope that the Rome Reborn model will help test theories about how the city worked and looked back then. The pictures seen here are from the model and depict the city as it once was.

All pictures are from the Smithsonian article.

The best part is that the project was spearheaded by the University of Virginia's own Bernard Frischer who is the head of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities here (the actual digital version was also created by people here)! The University of Virginia and Milan Polytechnic used lasers designed to measure jet aircraft to help create the digital representation. More than 100 people from Italy, the U.S., Germany, and Britain worked on this project, which has been licensed commercially. For tons more information, check out U.Va.'s Rome Reborn Web site here which has great photos, a history of the project, and more video clips.

The model will soon have the addition of tens of thousands of characters and layers of texture to help the model look more "lived in." "Rewind Rome" will be officially unveiled on April 21, 2008 (which is reportedly Rome's 2,760th birthday).

Fly through ancient Rome
Here!