VISUALIZING THE HISTORY AND ANALYZING THE SCULPTURAL DECORATION OF THE TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA IN VIRTUAL REALITY

Abstract

The project presented here started approximately four years ago and concerns the main temple of Olympia, a UNESCO world heritage site, which is visited by thousands of tourists nearly every day. Although Olympia is familiar to everybody and its monuments have been well-researched for more than a century, there are still many puzzles related to its history and remains. A new interpretation of the east pediment of the temple and the ensuing debate caused the reopening of the issue of the reconstruction. The historical setting of the temple-building was also reconsidered and led to a detailed study and reconstruction of the architecture as well. All these investigations made extensive use of digital technologies and are presented here as a case study for applying virtual reality to old problems of classical archaeology. The digitization of the extant fragments and a three-year project enabled the production of a virtual 3D reconstruction of the east pediment of the classical temple of Zeus. In addition, the Doric temple itself as well as the famous cult statue made by Pheidias were also reconstructed virtually, making thus the visualization of the long and complicated history of the entire monument possible. The model is highly flexible and can thus be adapted to illustrate and to test different scholarly hypotheses concerning some details, e.g. the arrangement of the central group of the east pediment or the effects of different lighting conditions. It also allows the nonspecialist user to manipulate the individual pieces of sculpture, to familiarize him- or herself with their original appearance and position on the building and finally to observe minor details and to learn more about the problems involved in reconstructing ancient works of art. A short video-summary and a CD ROM have been published, both of which can be used for different purposes and audiences.