For the past ten years, the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia has been working with a number of groups from UCLA, and other institutions around the world, to build a 3D model of ancient Rome (notional date of model June 21, 320 A.D.) as well as a digital version called Rome Reborn 1.0. Yesterday, June 11th, the model was shown at a ceremony in Rome and “video fly-throughs” of the digital city were posted on the Rome Reborn 1.0 web site.

Currently the site’s video fly-throughs include a bird’s eye view of the city, a walk through the Colosseum, a look at the Roman Forum, and a tour of the Basilica Maxentius. While all of these videos allow users to have a better glimpse of the digital city, “studies are underway to determine ways of making the real-time, interactive version of the model available on the Internet.” This spirit of the site as a work-in-progress can also be seen in the site’s name. As improvements and new features are added to the site the name will change from 1.0 to 2.0 and so on.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.