Work on developing a virtual model of the city of Rome in the fourth century A.D. began in Caen in 1994. The project is based on a 70-square meter model of ancient Rome that was made by the architect P. Bigot at the beginning of the 20th century, known in French as the “Plan de Rome”. The Plan de Rome is an exceptional piece of our cultural heritage whose only equivalents are its twin which is in Brussels and the model made by I. Gismondi which is in the Museum of Roman Civilization in Rome. Our relief plan is the origin of a pluridisciplinary project for a virtual 3D model reconstructed in computer-generated images. A new research structure – the Interdisciplinary Virtual Reality Center (Centre Interdisciplinaire de Réalité Virtuelle or CIREVE) – has since been added to support the work of building the virtual model of the ancient city of Rome. The CIREVE is a University of Caen shared resource that makes it possible to pool the staff and equipment for the application of virtual reality techniques for research purposes.
The work involves the development of a fully interactive model of ancient Rome that includes both its architecture and the machinery in use. In reconstituting the past, scholars will be able to test their assumptions from the architectural and topographic viewpoints and test machine functionality. The visitor to the virtual site will be able to wander through a full-scale city and enter most of its large public monuments and a few residences The work preliminary to the reconstruction itself involves the analysis of ancient source materials, which is currently being performed by the project team’s members who have recourse to outside experts for help with specific points. The body of source material is directly accessible via the interactive model.
We propose to explain our methodology and to visit some interactive model of ancient Rome with the documentation accessible.