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If we search to know Western civilization, we should look again not simply to Rome, but in addition to Athens. And at the moment, due to computer-generated imagery knowledgeable by historic analysis, we are able to look not simply to these cities, however at them — or not less than at convincing digital reconstructions, however from angles their precise inhabitants might scarcely have imagined. Just a few years in the past, we featured here on Open Culture the Youtube channel Ancient Athens 3D for its reconstructions of particular person constructions just like the Temples of Ilissos and Hephaestus. Its more recent video above presents a twelve-minute digital tour of all classical Athens within the fifth century BC, the peak of historical Greek civilization.
In that interval, in line with the video, Athens “was the middle of the humanities, theater, philosophy, and democracy.” Within the metropolis “nice monuments of structure have been constructed and have been largely related to the Athenian normal Pericles.”
It was Pericles who led the city-state through the first two years of the Peloponnesian Conflict, the battle by which Athens would ultimately fall to Sparta in 404 BC — a defeat that had nearly, however not fairly come to the town in the meanwhile Historic Athens 3D creator Dimitris Tsalkanis brings it again to life. He consists of every little thing from the Acropolis and the Agora to the Olympieion and the Sacred Gate, all trying as in the event that they’ll stand endlessly.
Nor does Tsalkanis ignore even better-known classical Greek buildings just like the Parthenon, whose detailed reconstruction, inside and outside, additionally seems in its own video just above. Commissioned by Pericles, constructed on the Acropolis, and devoted to the goddess Athena, “patroness of the town of Athens,” the constructing stays “an emblem of historical Greece, democracy, and Western civilization” practically two and half millennia after its development, and greater than two centuries after the Earl of Elgin had its mythology-depicting marbles despatched off to England. You may nonetheless see them on the British Museum (not less than for now), and for that matter you’ll be able to nonetheless go to the Parthenon itself in Athens — or not less than the ruins thereof, wholly untouched by digital magic.
Associated content material:
How Ancient Greek Statues Really Looked: Research Reveals Their Bold, Bright Colors and Patterns
Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vases Come to Life with 21st Century Animation
What Did Ancient Greek Music Sound Like?: Listen to a Reconstruction That’s ‘100% Accurate’
An 8-Minute Animated Flight Over Ancient Rome
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and tradition. His initiatives embrace the Substack e-newsletter Books on Cities, the guide The Stateless Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Century Los Angeles and the video collection The City in Cinema. Observe him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
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