Explore the World’s First 3D Replica of St. Peter’s Basilica, Made with AI

In the trail­er below for the world’s first 3D repli­ca of St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, Yves Ubel­mann speaks of using “AI for Good,” which isn’t just an ide­al, but also the name of a lab at Microsoft. Microsoft and Ubel­man’s dig­i­tal-preser­va­tion com­pa­ny Iconem were two of the par­tic­i­pants in that ambi­tious project, along with the Vat­i­can itself. Pope Fran­cis, writes AP’s Nicole Win­field, “has called for the eth­i­cal use of AI and used his annu­al World Mes­sage of Peace this year to urge an inter­na­tion­al treaty to reg­u­late it, argu­ing that tech­nol­o­gy lack­ing human val­ues of com­pas­sion, mer­cy, moral­i­ty and for­give­ness were too great.”

What bet­ter show of good faith in the tech­nol­o­gy than to allow AI to be used to bring the cen­ter of the faith Pope Fran­cis rep­re­sents to the world? In the near­ly 400 years since its com­ple­tion, of course, the world has always come to the cur­rent St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, and will con­tin­ue to do so.

The 3D-repli­ca project “has been launched ahead of the Vatican’s 2025 Jubilee, a holy year in which more than 30 mil­lion pil­grims are expect­ed to pass through the basilica’s Holy Door, on top of the 50,000 who vis­it on a nor­mal day,” Win­field writes. But no mat­ter where in the world you hap­pen to be, you can vir­tu­al­ly enter St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca right now, and spend as long as you like, admir­ing the basil­i­ca itself, the cupo­la, Bernini’s St. Peter’s Bal­dachin, and Michelan­gelo’s Pietà, among oth­er fea­tures.

How­ev­er impor­tant (and atten­tion-draw­ing) arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence was as a tool in the cre­ation of this ultra-pre­cise “dig­i­tal twin” of St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, the four-week process of cap­tur­ing every detail of the real struc­ture that could be cap­tured also neces­si­tat­ed the use of drones, lasers, and cam­eras tak­ing more than 400,000 dig­i­tal pho­tos. The “AI for Good Lab con­tributed advanced tools that refined the dig­i­tal twin with mil­lime­ter-lev­el accu­ra­cy, and used AI to help detect and map struc­tur­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties like cracks and miss­ing mosa­ic tiles,” says Microsoft­’s site. “The Vat­i­can over­saw the col­lab­o­ra­tion, ensur­ing the preser­va­tion of the Basil­i­ca as a cul­tur­al, spir­i­tu­al, and his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant site for years to come.”

It makes a cer­tain sense to apply the high­est tech­nol­o­gy of our time for the ben­e­fit of a build­ing known as the great­est archi­tec­tur­al mar­vel of its time. But in order to bet­ter appre­ci­ate the kind of knowl­edge that will be revealed by the 22 petabytes of infor­ma­tion that went into the dig­i­tal mod­el (which offers its own guid­ed tour) we’d do well to immerse our­selves first in what was already known about St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca. For a brief intro­duc­tion to the con­cep­tion and evo­lu­tion of this grand church as it stands today, we could do much worse than archi­tec­ture-and-his­to­ry YouTu­ber Manuel Bravo’s video “St Peter’s Basil­i­ca Explained.” If you watch it, don’t be sur­prised if you find your­self tempt­ed to engage in pro­longed explo­ration of the mod­el — or indeed, to book a vis­it to the real thing. Enter the dig­i­tal St. Peter’s here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

The Vat­i­can Library Goes Online and Dig­i­tizes Tens of Thou­sands of Man­u­scripts, Books, Coins, and More

Rome Reborn: A New 3D Vir­tu­al Mod­el Lets You Fly Over the Great Mon­u­ments of Ancient Rome

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.