Welcome to the Parthenon Scultpure Gallery. Here you will find 3D VRML samples from our dataset of digital 3D Parthenon sculpture models.

The Parthenon, located on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, was built as a temple to Athena and completed around 432 BC. This building is noted both for its architectural refinement and its numerous sculptural decorations. The three main types consist of the frieze, the metopes and the pediment sculptures. Today, nearly none of the original sculptures remain in situ on the Parthenon. Many have been damaged or destroyed, the remaining pieces have been moved to museums around the world.

The data for the models in this gallery was gathered from the Basel Skulpturhalle in Switzerland. This museum houses a unique collection of high quality plaster casts of all the known Parthenon sculptures.

Using a custom built structured light scanner, all of these plaster casts have been digitally scanned and assembled as 3D models. Using a systematic scanning approach, the 2,200+ scans used to assemble the meshes were acquired in five days with a team of four people. The models were subsequently aligned, merged, and decimated using the MeshAlign v.2 and MeshMerge software tools developed by the Visual Computing Group at CNR-Pisa in the framework of the EU "ViHAP3D" project.

Galleries

To view these models you must install a VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) browser plugin. If you are using a Windows9X/NT machine, our best experience has been with the Blaxxun3D plugin. You can choose between an automatic install (1.5MB) or manual download (5MB) at Blaxxun3D. For Mac users we recommend using the Cortona3D plugin. For Unix users please select from one of the various plugins that can be found at Web3D.org. These VRML samples are approximately 1MB in size (compressed). Once installed, please continue to the sculpture galleries linked below.

If you are using the Blaxxun3D plugin, hold down the left mouse button and move mouse to rotate model. Click on the model and use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out. The Page Up key will reset the camera view. You can also right mouse click to bring up the options menu. Each VRML model in the gallery is compressed to about 1meg in size. The speed of loading up the VRML model will vary depending on the speed of your internet connection and the speed of your processor.

The Parthenon Frieze
By: Ian Jenkins, British Museum Press

Der Parthenon in Basel
By: Ernst Berger

The Parthenon
By: Abrams