A view of the Capitoline Temple in Cologne as depicted the virtual city-model COLONIA|3D.

Der Spiegel Online reports that a team of archaeologists, scientists and software programmers has created a 3D virtual model of the city of Cologne as it was 2,000 years ago. Though not yet online, the program allows visitors to navigate a virtual “flight” around the city, where they will find authentic sights, such as the massive city wall and its monumental gates, the forum, the over 40-meter-high (130-foot) Capitoline Temple, the forum with its semicircular portico and the proconsul’s palace.

COLONIA|3D, as the program is called, is the joint initiative of several German universities and Cologne’s Romano-Germanic Museum. Hamburg and Berlin already have 3D city models that allow users to take virtual flights through the cities using Google Earth. Virtual models of other historical places also exist — for example, for Rome, Pompeii and Herculaneum — but in a different form. Those were more like computer-generated animations rather than large-scale models that you could navigate.

Go to the Photo Gallery of the 3D Virtual City Model of Roman Cologne.

Related posts:  Building on the past  //  3-D version of ancient Rome in Google Earth  //  Virtual heritage exhibits and projects taking off  //

This entry was posted on zondag, oktober 19th, 2008 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Museum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.