Ancient Rome Simulated in 3-D

June 15, 2007 — Recreating ancient Rome is the goal of a project that has created the biggest, most complete three-dimensional simulation of a historic city.

Rome Reborn, a 3-D computer model that runs in real-time animation, allows a person to explore streets and buildings of the ancient city at its peak of prosperity, in A.D. 320.

Not only will the simulation serve as a teaching tool, but the developers eventually want to make it part of an online journal that will publish scholarly articles documenting how ancient buildings appeared.

"3-D technology has been widely adopted by archaeologists, but there is no place for them to publish their work," said Bernard Frischer, director of the project and of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "We want to take on the responsibility of the long-term preservation of this work."

Ten years in the making, Rome Reborn is based on the Plastico di Roma antica, a 40-foot by 60-foot plaster model of the city on display at the Museum of Roman Civilization in Rome.

Led by Gabriele Guidi, a professor at the Politecnico di Milano, an international group of archaeologists, architects and computer specialists used laser scanners to take millions of measurements of the model's surface — including the buildings, trees and roads.

Guided by the laser scans as well as five centuries of research documented by scholars, architects and artists, the team digitally rebuilt 7,000 structures — apartment dwellings, private houses, public buildings, baths, warehouses, bakeries and fountains that existed within the city's 50-square-mile span.

At least 30 of those buildings, for which the team acquired significant documentation, are reconstructed with the interior and exterior details of frescoes, reliefs, windows and doors.

The other buildings are represented in a more simple, schematic way. This work was largely done at UCLA in a lab directed by Diane Favro, a Roman architectural historian.

A virtual explorer can wander the streets of Rome using the arrow keys on a computer keyboard. The explorer can enter a private dwelling or the Roman Senate House, the Colosseum, even the Temple of Venus and Rome, once the city's largest place of worship.

During the journey, the person can also request scholarly information that backs up a building's location, layout and look. For example, the user can place the cursor over a particular building and press the letter "d" on the keyboard to pull up a dialogue box.

The window displays Google Earth with the exact coordinates of the virtual building and provides links to online documents about the building.

"You've seen pictures of Roman ruins. If you were to try and imagine what they looked like, you might have all sorts of misconceptions," said Robert Stein, director of information technology at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

But with Rome Reborn, he said, the buildings are accurate, right down to their orientation and how the rising and setting sun lit them.

"You can actually see it in a way that is realistic and based on researched fact, as opposed to coming up with your own interpretation," said Stein. The museum is incorporating an interactive display using Rome Reborn as part of the exhibition, "Roman Art from the Louvre," which opens in late September.

Eventually Frischer and his team want to post the computer model on the Internet and run it like a peer-reviewed journal. Researchers will be able to submit new findings about the ancient city, which if accepted for publication, will help the model to become more accurate.