The Ministry of Culture and Sports and Microsoft Corp. today presented the project “Ancient Olympia: Common Place”, in the presence of the President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou.
The project was inaugurated by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The project is the result of a collaboration between the Ministry of Culture and Sports and Microsoft Corp and concerns the digital preservation and restoration of Ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games, using artificial intelligence.
This digital revival project allows viewers around the world to explore Ancient Olympia as it was more than 2,000 years ago with an exciting experience through an interactive mobile app, a PC experience, and the Microsoft HoloLens 2 report. housed in the Athens Olympic Museum.
The digital preservation of Ancient Olympia allows the visitor to walk the streets of the archeological site in one of the most important periods of history – which comes to life in a realistic, fascinating way that until now was not possible. 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 accomplish today.
“The project” Ancient Olympia: Common Place “is a unique way to get to know the cultural heritage of Greece. “Visitors from all over the world can” visit “through digital imaging the place as it was in antiquity and experience the history and values it stands for using augmented reality technology,” said Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Prime Minister of Greece.
“The project for the digital preservation of Ancient Olympia is an important achievement in the field of promoting cultural heritage. “It brings together the human factor and cutting-edge technology and invites future generations to explore our past in new ways,” said Brad Smith, President of Microsoft.
“With the digital representation of the pan-Hellenic sanctuary of Ancient Olympia, the cultural heritage, but also the values of Olympism, peace, harmony, excellence, noble rivalry, become accessible to the whole world, to the whole planet, through use of state-of-the-art technology. The project of Digital Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of Ancient Olympia through the use of Technologies of Artificial Intelligence and Mixed Reality, implemented through cultural sponsorship of Microsoft, promotes and highlights the unique and emblematic archaeological site of Ancient Olympia, contributes to the research, contributes to the research and the tourism and the extroversion of the country as a modern and strong democracy with a great historical and cultural past and unquestionable development dynamics “, said the Minister of Culture and Sports Lina Mendoni.
“We thank the Greek government for the trust and cooperation it took to make this project a reality. We look forward to discovering together the different ways in which we can work together to make the most of this project to enhance tourism, education and what Greece means today to the rest of the world, said Theodosis Michalopoulos, General Manager for Microsoft Greece Cyprus and Malta.
In total, the project restores 27 digital monuments in the area, among them, the Stadium, the temples of Zeus and Hera, the workshop of Pheidias. In the 3D experience, these buildings are reconstructed in realistic detail, with painstaking research by an interdisciplinary team of the Ministry of Culture and Sports, to be as faithful as possible to their original form. This includes historical timelines of site changes, over time, and illustrations of artifacts from each period.
Through its AI for Cultural Heritage initiative, Microsoft partnered with technology company Iconem, which specializes in digitizing historic sites in 3D, to create the fundamental model of Ancient Olympia. Using ground-based cameras and drones to capture hundreds of thousands of images of the archeological site, Microsoft AI then processed the images to create models that were so accurate that they rendered photorealistic.
The collaboration between the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports and Microsoft brought together people from different backgrounds – theoretically and technically, such as archaeologists, architects and programmers – and from around the world to work, find new ways to overcome challenges and finally find a common ground to bring this project to life – not only to preserve the past using AI technology, but also to guide these principles into the future.
These monuments have survived thousands of years of weather, wars, earthquakes and successive changes over time, and need digital maintenance to ensure that all elements of the rich history and common values that the monuments emit will be passed on to future generations. generations.
You can see the experience at olympiacommongrounds.gr and download the Application in the iOS and Android application stores through this link from your mobile phone.
The exhibition “Ancient Olympia: Common Place”, which includes a virtual tour with HoloLens 2, is open in a special area which the Olympic Museum of Athens, created on the initiative of Lamda Development, and which houses a significant part of the Olympic heritage of our country, granted to the Ministry of Culture and Sports, in the context of Cultural Sponsorship, which in addition to the availability of space, also includes its operation. From today, those interested can visit the exhibition of the Ministry of Culture and Sports at the Olympic Museum of Athens, located at 37A Kifissias Avenue in Maroussi. Visitors will have the opportunity to explore digitally and free of charge the emblematic monuments of Ancient Olympia and live an exciting experience.
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