The "Lithodomos VR" app allows people to experience archaeological reconstructions of
ancient Jerusalem, at the height of the city's splendor under Roman rule in the first century.
Credit: Lithodomos VR
This story was updated at 12:29 a.m. ET on April 7.
Visitors to Jerusalem and virtual tourists alike can now see the city as it looked in ancient history, with a virtual-reality app based on archaeological reconstructions of the city at the height of its splendor under Roman rule in the first century.
The program, named "Lithodomos VR," is a paid android app for smartphones and portable virtual-reality headsets that was launched on Google Play in December 2016. The app sells for $1.99 on Google Play, and $2.99 in the Apple App Store. Developed by Simon Young, an archaeology doctoral student at the University of Melbourne in Australia, the app includes a 3D virtual view of the area around Jerusalem's Western Wall, where the ancient stone walls of the city's Temple Mount can still be seen. By using the app on a portable VR headset and smartphone, visitors to the Western Wall can compare the modern-day view with a 3D, 360-degree reconstruction of the ancient city from the same location, when the wall and the Jewish temple above it had been newly built on the orders of Herod I (74 B.C.- 4 B.C.), the Roman-backed king of Judea. [See Photos of the VR App and Ancient Jerusalem]
Young told Live Science that the reconstruction of the first-century scene was faithful to the latest archaeological research, and will be updated as new research becomes available.
"The VR content that we are deploying on the app is the result of carefully researched material from archaeological excavations, site plans, elevation drawings, photographs of textures and [geographic information system] mapping, as well as topographical data from NASA's ASTER digital elevation models," he said. "So all the content is linked in to the real world."
Romans go home
The VR scenes of Jerusalem in the Lithodomos VR app are based on the archaeology of the city years after Herod rebuilt the Temple Mount around 20 B.C., Young said, and before the destruction of the temple precinct by Roman troops in A.D 70, during the rebellion against Roman rule that became known as the Jewish Revolt.
In addition to the virtual view of the ancient Western Wall, the app includes a reconstruction of a market street in the city, where the virtual houses are based on real excavations. The featured objects, such as ceramics and street furniture, were modeled on data from first-century artifacts in Israeli museums, according to Young.
"We're really making sure that rather than just being haphazardly thrown together, what you're seeing really does correspond to the research," Young said.
"I see virtual reality as a really important way of communicating what is often a lifetime of work for many archaeologists," he added, "so there's a line I don’t cross." https://www.livescience.com/58566-ancient-jerusalem-reconstructed-in-virtual-reality-app.html
