World History and Culture: State Hermitage Museum in Saint-Petersburg opened "Two Palmyras: Real and Virtual" exhibition

On December 2, the exhibition "Two Palmyras: Real and Virtual" was opened in the General Staff building (State Hermitage Museum, Saint-Petersburg) as part of the large-scale programme for the Palmyra Day in the Hermitage.

The Palmyra Day in the Hermitage is arranged jointly with the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences and under the auspices of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO and comprises a series of events devoted to discussion of the ancient city’s role in world culture, possibilities and methods for restoring the site, and problems of preserving the “Archaeological Monuments of Palmyra” UNESCO World Heritage site.

Besides professional discussions, the programme includes the opening of three exhibitions, the key element of which is a comparison of two Palmyras – Southern and Northern, the ancient city itself and Saint-Petersburg. The exhibition "Two Palmyras: Real and Virtual" develops on this theme, reflecting other parallels as well: the real-life city that has been destroyed several times for its existence, and its virtual embodiments that aim to preserve the appearance of the city at various periods in its history.

The main idea of ​​the exhibition, which runs until January 24, 2021, is to present the current stage in the study of Palmyra and to demonstrate the results of the most up-to-date monitoring of the state of the site that is being carried out in the hope of the reconstruction of the ancient city at some later date.

The central part of the display is a detailed model of the territory of ancient Palmyra on a scale of 1:300 made by 3D printing and based on photogrammetric scanning carried out by specialists from the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Geoscan company.

The expeditions to create a 3D digital model of the site and record the damage inflicted on it took place in 2016 and 2019 under the leadership of the IHMC’s Deputy Director, Natalia Solovyova. The State Hermitage specialists and military topographers participated in its work. Over several years, a tremendous job was accomplished: more than 55,000 high-definition aerial photographs were taken, covering a total area of 20 square kilometres, while the elements of the model are made up of almost 700 million points with detailing down to three centimetres. The aerial photography was supplemented by several thousand ground-level shots of the most important objects of the ancient city that had been particularly badly affected by the acts of destruction, including world-famous works of architecture – the Great Colonnade, Monumental Arch, Temples of Bel and Baalshamin, Roman Theatre. Thanks to the large-scale work carried out, Russian scientists acquired high-precision 3D models of the terrain and buildings and created detailed orthophoto maps with high spatial resolution, making it possible to study the layout of Palmyra in great depth. The world’s most detailed and precise digital model of Palmyra was completed and formally presented in August 2020.

Based on the 3D model, researchers have been developing a geographic information system named PalmyraGIS (Palmyra in Time and Space) with a database that encompasses the results of all previous archaeological and historical studies of the city made over the past 300 years, as well as a geospatial depiction of the current state of the site. For each object, there is a description of the time, extent and character of the damage inflicted in recent years. All this is not merely a document registering the barbaric destruction of humanity’s cultural assets, but also a research tool that surpasses in its universality all methods employed hitherto. The data obtained will become a reliable foundation for the planning of any further measures for the reconstruction, restoration and conservation of the monuments and further scholarly research into Palmyra. The digital model can be explored on the special website https://palmyra-3d.online.

The exhibition also features one more high-precision model – a detailed recreation of the Temple of Bel that was destroyed in 2015. The temple has been made on a scale of 1:33 and it presents the famous edifice in two states – in the condition on the eve of the destruction in 2015 and as a complete reconstruction. The model has been produced from the digital reconstruction carried out by specialists from Mikhail Atayants’s Architectural Studio in the team of the IHMC’s 2019 expedition. This digital model is considerably superior to all similar works presently known concerning the scientific approach to questions of reconstruction, detailing and the quality of execution. This reconstruction has also served as the basis for the creation of interactive software that allows people to take a virtual walk around the temple area and that can also be tried out at the exhibition.

The display is supplemented by exhibits that show the changing state of Palmyra over the last 250 years – items relating to the architecture of ancient Palmyra and the 2016 and 2019 expeditions, as well as a series of photographs for comparison. In this way, the exhibition not only presents cutting-edge technologies and the latest methods in the preservation of cultural treasures but also acquaints visitors with the actual process of international work in Palmyra.