Ancient Olympia: Common Grounds
About this good practice
Today, 27 major monuments and many minor ones still stand in Ancient Olympia. Among them, are the original Olympic Stadium, the temples of Zeus and Hera, and the workshop of the renowned sculptor Phidias. These monuments survived thousands of years of weather, war, earthquakes, and modernization. They are meticulously conserved and restored by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports. But they are in need of digital preservation as well, to ensure that all the evidence of the rich history and civil common ground values that the site was built upon is handed over to future generations.
That’s why the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports is collaborating with Microsoft to create Common Grounds, a digital revival project that aims to preserve and restore valuable pieces of our past and empower global audiences to embrace the idea of finding common ground through our shared history.
Through AI for Cultural Heritage initiative, was created the foundational model of Ancient Olympia. Using both on-the-ground cameras & drones to take hundreds of thousands of images of the site, Microsoft AI then processed the pictures to create models so precise, they render as photo-realistic.
In the 3D experience, buildings are recreated in lifelike detail, painstakingly researched by the Hellenic Ministry’s expert archaeologists to be as true as possible to their original forms. This includes historical timelines of the site’s changes over time and depictions of artifacts from each period.
Resources needed
The collaboration between the Greek Ministry and Microsoft brought together for 18 months people from from different parts of the worl &different backgrounds, such as archaeologists, architects and programmers to reconstruct in their original form, 27 monuments of the archaeological site
Evidence of success
This digital revival project allows viewers around the world to explore Ancient Olympia as it was more than 2,000 years ago with an immersive experience through an interactive mobile app, a desktop experience. This digital preservation allows the visitor to walk the streets of the archaeological site in one of the most important periods of history. Actually, after questionnaires, the online visitors have expressed their desire to visit Ancient Olympia and walk in the real ground
Potential for learning or transfer
This initiative is a collaboration between AI for Cultural Heritage, Microsoft collaborated with the technology company Iconem, which specializes in digitizing historical sites in 3D, in order to create the foundational model of Ancient Olympia. Using ground-based cameras and drones to capture hundreds of thousands of images of the archaeological site, Microsoft AI then processed the images to create models so accurate, they render as photorealistic. This new form of digital archiving will continue to provide a 'gateway' to another era, helping us to understand what humanity has achieved in the past and reminding us of what we can achieve today. Therefore, this initiative performs a good practice for other areas because they can realize that the collaboration of pioneer IT companies, with the support of regional and national public authorities, can contribute to magnificent results for the promotion of cultural sites like the worldwide one of Ancient Olympia