Digital Roman Forum

摘要

The advent of computer-aided design (CAD) software has revolutionized the engineering and architectural fields, to be sure, but it has also proven to be of immense value to other fields such as archaeology, history, and even classics. The Digital Roman Forum website hosted by the University of California Los Angeles is perfect example of how new technology can bring the past to life, and provide researchers with a three-dimensional graphical reference tool for the study of ancient Forum Romanum, the capital of the ancient empire. The project, which was developed with the Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory (CVRLab) at UCLA from 1997 to 2003 with subsequent help from the National Science Foundation, consists of an interactive web-based reconstruction of the Roman Forum as it probably looked on the notional date of June 21, 400 CE.