Launched new services for St. Peter’s Basilica this Monday (11), allowing virtual access to its Renaissance-era architectural treasures for everyone and enhanced tours for visitors.
The new experiences were revealed in time for the Catholic Church’s Holy Year or Jubilee celebrations in 2025, which take place every quarter of a century.
“St. Peter’s Basilica is like a starry sky on a summer night: you are enchanted by its splendor,” said St. Peter’s Archpriest, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, excited by the fact that the new tools will function as a telescope or a spaceship for better viewing.
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Working with aea Iconem, a company specializing in the digitization of historical heritage sites, the Vatican has launched a new interactive website, a digital replica of the basilica and two AI-enabled exhibitions.
Around 40,000 to 50,000 people visit the Basilica daily.
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A 3D model of St. Peter’s Basilica was built by scanning the basilica using drones, cameras and lasers. AI algorithms gathered, elaborated and completed the data.
The drones flew at night for four weeks, taking more than 400,000 photographs and collecting the data equivalent of a 6-kilometer column of DVDs. Digital twin data will also be key to preservation and restoration work.
“We are bringing St. Peter’s Basilica not just to the world, but to a new generation of people, in a language that is more accessible to the times we live in,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told reporters.
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The acknowledged that AI can expand access to knowledge, but has repeatedly warned that it should only be used ethically, to benefit humanity.
“The correct and constructive use of the potential (of AI), which is certainly useful, can be ambivalent, it depends on us,” he said this Monday, when the project was presented.
