The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sport and Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday 
announced Ancient Olympia: Common Grounds, a new collaboration to digitally 
preserve and restore ancient Olympia, the original home of the Olympic games, 
using AI. This digital revival project allows viewers around the world to 
explore ancient Olympia as it stood more than 2,000 years ago through an 
immersive experience via an interactive mobile app, web-based desktop 
experience, or a Microsoft HoloLens 2 exhibition at the Athens Olympic Museum. 

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Digitally preserving ancient Olympia gives people a way to walk through the 
site during one of history's most important periods — brought to life in a 
realistic, engaging way that was never before possible. This new form of 
digital archiving will continue to offer a portal to another era, helping us 
understand what humanity has achieved in the past and reminding us of what 
we're capable of today.

"Ancient Olympia: Common Grounds is a unique way of experiencing Greece's proud 
cultural heritage. Visitors around the world can virtually visit the ancient 
site of Olympia and experience history firsthand using augmented reality 
technology," said Kyriakos Mitsotakis, prime minister of Greece. 

"The project to digitally preserve ancient Olympia is a stunning achievement in 
cultural heritage, bringing together humanity and cutting-edge technology to 
benefit the world and empower coming generations with new ways to explore our 
past," said Brad Smith, president and vice chair, Microsoft. 

"With the digital representation of the Panhellenic sanctuary of Ancient 
Olympia, its cultural heritage — but also the values of Olympism, peace, 
harmony, excellence and noble rivalry — becomes accessible to the whole world 
through the use of state-of-the-art technology. The digital preservation 
project, through the use of artificial intelligence and augmented reality 
technologies, implemented through the cultural sponsorship of Microsoft, 
promotes and highlights the unique and emblematic archaeological site of 
Ancient Olympia. This contributes to the research and documentation of 
monuments, supports the tourism and extroversion of the country as a modern and 
strong democracy with a long historical and cultural past and unquestionable 
development dynamics," said Lina Mendoni, Hellenic Republic Minister of Culture 
and Sports.

"We thank the Greek government for the trust and the great partnership it took 
to make this project a reality. I am looking forward to exploring the different 
ways we can work together to leverage even further Common Grounds to enhance 
tourism, education and Greece's brand name to the rest of the world," said 
Theodosis Michalopoulos, general manager for Microsoft Greece Cyprus and Malta.
 
In total, the project digitally preserves 27 monuments at the site, among them 
the original Olympic Stadium, the temples of Zeus and Hera, and the workshop of 
the renowned sculptor Phidias. In the 3D experience, these buildings are 
recreated in lifelike detail, painstakingly researched by the Hellenic 
Ministry's expert archaeologists to be as true as possible to their original 
forms. This includes historical timelines of the site's changes over time and 
depictions of artifacts from each period.  

Through its AI for Cultural Heritage initiative, Microsoft partnered with 
technology company Iconem, which specializes in digitizing historic sites in 
3D, to create the foundational model of ancient Olympia. Both on-the-ground 
cameras and drones were used to take hundreds of thousands of images of the 
site, which Microsoft AI processed to create models so precise, they render as 
photorealistic. 

The collaboration between the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports and 
Microsoft brought together people from diverse backgrounds — theoretical and 
technical, like archaeologists and developers — and from various parts of the 
world to work, find new ways to overcome challenges, and eventually find a 
common ground to make this project come to life — not just to preserve the past 
with the use of AI technology but also to drive these principles into the 
future. 

These monuments survived thousands of years of weather, war, earthquakes and 
modernization, and are in need of digital preservation to ensure that all the 
evidence of the rich history and civil common ground values that the site was 
built upon is handed over to future generations.

The web experience may be viewed at olympiacommongrounds.gr ( 
https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&l=en&o=3353854-1&h=3526526437&u=http%3A%2F%2Folympiacommongrounds.gr%2F&a=olympiacommongrounds.gr 
), and the app may be downloaded ( 
https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&l=en&o=3353854-1&h=1453727405&u=https%3A%2F%2Fancientolympia.app.link%2F&a=downloaded 
) on the iOS and Android app stores. 

The Ancient Olympia: Common Grounds Exhibition, featuring the HoloLens 2 
Virtual Tour, is now open to the public at the Athens Olympic Museum.

Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era 
of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower 
every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Source - Microsoft Corp.

CONTACT: Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 
638-7777, rapidresponse@we-worldwide.com