For the 2025 Jubilee to be held in Rome, St. Peter’s Basilica, one of the most visited monuments in the world and a universal symbol of Christianity, will be able to be admired by everyone thanks to technology. In fact, those who will not be able to get to Rome will be able to visit it digitally from home.
Thanks to a collaboration with Microsoft, the digital version of the basilica has been created with four hundred thousand photographs taken with traditional cameras, but also with drones that have stored an impressive array of data to restore every architectural and decorative detail of the monument. This will allow users to explore even the details that cannot be appreciated with the naked eye. The technology, desired by the Fabbrica di S. Pietro which is responsible for the maintenance and conservation of the basilica, ensures that the visitor is immersed into the experience, just as if they were aboard a drone. As stated on the basilica’s website, specifically, advanced technologies such as photogrammetry and artificial intelligence were used to create an ultra-precise virtual reconstruction of the monument.
The path made by the drone moves along the canopy and Bernini’s Baroque columns, ascending to the center of the dome, which has a diameter of 45 meters, capturing the details of the gold background mosaic on which the iconographies of Saints, Angels and the Blessing God stand out.
Those going to Rome for the Jubilee will be able to visit, starting in the coming days, the immersive multimedia exhibition “Petros enì” (Peter is here).
“The digital twin of the Vatican basilica,” stresses Father Francesco Occhetta, secretary of the Fratelli Tutti Foundation, which works with the Fabbrica di S. Pietro, ”will allow everyone to pass through the Holy Door, even the poor who cannot come to Rome. Those who will instead be able to see the multimedia exhibition installed in the basilica will also have the privilege of accessing the gallery, right under the dome, and walk through interior corridors never open to visitors that offer from their windows the view from above the most important church for Christians. “Admission will be charged to enter, we are still evaluating it, but it will be very popular,” Father Fortunato assures.
