CARACALLA: NOT ONLY OPERA BUT A FULL DISCOVERY OF THEIR ORIGINAL APPEARANCE

Archeology offers our eyes the vestiges of a distant past. Forty years ago, visitors to archaeological sites were few and in general had a preparation that allowed them to look at ancient structures and imagine their original appearance.

In recent years, the use of archaeological sites has grown enormously and it has become necessary to guarantee everyone the opportunity to read and interpret the ruins of the past. A disclosure to which information along with technology and digital technology are giving new catalyst, in particular with video reconstructions and, with particular viewers, through immersive reality in three dimensions.

Specifically, the complex, inaugurated by Emperor Caracalla of the Severi dynasty in 216 AD, is an exceptional testimony of the city’s past: they are in fact the only monumental baths of ancient Rome to have maintained their architectural structure in such a completed and preserved form.

The building therefore presents the ideal conditions for an immersive three-dimensional reconstruction that, thanks to the georeferencing and orientation systems, offers the visitor a possibility of continuous comparison between what he sees around him and the reconstruction in the viewer, ie between physical and virtual reality, allowing him to make a journey through time between past and present through the fourth dimension.

A journey through time that is through the fourth dimension: the Baths of Caracalla become the first large Italian archaeological site entirely usable in 3D. Virtual reality will allow us to see the Baths not only as they are today, but as they were in 216 AD, at the time of their inauguration.

The project offers visitors the opportunity to read and interpret the grand remains of the Terme degli imperatori of the Severi dynasty, in a continuous confrontation between physical and virtual reality, between present and past.

 

The technology is based on a viewer, inside which a latest generation mobile phone is inserted with specific software. With simple commands managed by a single button, the device with geo-referencing will reproduce the places where the visitor is located with an immersive perspective, covering all the visual space. The viewers will be available at the entrance to the Baths during the normal opening hours of the monument.

The visit, divided into ten stages of which you are with virtual reality, is based on philological reconstructions of the Baths, based on the studies of the last thirty years.