Microsoft Partners With Greece to Digitally Preserve Ancient Olympia
The Ministry of Culture and Sport of Greece and Microsoft unveiled “Ancient Olympia: Common Grounds,” a new collaboration to digitally preserve and restore ancient Olympia using artificial intelligence. Ancient Olympia was the original home of the Olympic Games.
This digital revival project allows viewers worldwide to explore ancient Olympia as it was more than 2,000 years ago, through an interactive mobile app, a desktop web interface, or a Microsoft HoloLens 2 exhibit at the Athens Olympic Museum.
Digitally preserving ancient Olympia gives people the chance to walk through this site during one of history's most important periods, bringing it to life in a realistic and engaging way that was previously impossible. This new form of digital archiving offers a portal into another era, helping us understand what humanity has achieved in the past and reminding us of what we are capable of today.
““Ancient Olympia: Common Grounds” is a unique way to get acquainted with Greece's proud cultural heritage. Visitors from around the world can virtually visit the ancient site of Olympia and personally explore its history using augmented reality technology”
In total, 27 monuments were digitally preserved as part of the project, including the original Olympic Stadium, the Temples of Zeus and Hera, and the workshop of the famous sculptor Phidias. In three-dimensional imagery, these buildings are recreated in realistic detail, carefully studied by experienced archaeologists from the Greek Ministry of Culture to match their original forms as closely as possible. This includes chronological timelines of changes over time and images of artifacts from each period.
“The digital preservation of ancient Olympia is an remarkable achievement in cultural heritage, uniting humanity and advanced technology for the good of the world and empowering future generations to explore our past in new ways”
As part of its AI for Cultural Heritage initiative, Microsoft teamed up with technology company Iconem, which specializes in digitizing historical sites in 3D, to create a foundational model of ancient Olympia. Ground cameras and drones were used to capture hundreds of thousands of images, which Microsoft AI processed to create models so accurate that they render as photorealistic.
“Through the digital representation of the Panhellenic sanctuary of Ancient Olympia, its cultural heritage, as well as the values of Olympism, peace, harmony, excellence and noble rivalry, become accessible to the whole world through the most advanced technologies. The digital preservation project, using artificial intelligence and augmented reality technologies and carried out with Microsoft's cultural sponsorship, promotes and showcases the unique and iconic archaeological excavations of Ancient Olympia. It supports the study and documentation of monuments, promotes tourism, and presents the country as a modern, strong democracy with a long historical and cultural past and undeniable development momentum”
The collaboration between Greece's Ministry of Culture and Sport and Microsoft brought together people from different fields, both theoretical and technical, such as archaeologists and developers, from different parts of the world to work, find new ways to solve problems, and ultimately find common ground for bringing this project to life. The goal is not only to preserve the past using artificial intelligence, but also to carry these principles into the future.
“We thank the Greek government for its trust and the excellent partnership required to bring this project to life. I look forward to exploring the various ways we can work together to make even greater use of our common ground to expand tourism, education and Greece's brand for the rest of the world”
These monuments have survived thousands of years of weather, wars, earthquakes and modernization and need digital preservation to ensure that all the evidence of the rich history and shared civic values on which the site was built is passed on to future generations.
“The Ministry of Culture and Sport of Greece and Microsoft are delighted to invite audiences from around the world to explore the ancient site of Olympia and personally share their thoughts on the values this site demonstrates. It is truly an opportunity to reflect on the fact that, although the technology is entirely new, many of these values remain timeless,” says the project website.
The digital tour, which may bring back memories of studying history and geography in the 1990s with Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia on CD-ROM, is part of the AI for Cultural Heritage project. The project also created digital tools for works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the 20th-century American artist Sol LeWitt.
