Virtual reconstructions of Persepolis: from 19th-century drawings to 3D VR

Charles Chipiez, a French architect and drawing teacher at the École Spéciale d'Architecture, collaborated with archaeologist Georges Perrot for two decades from 1880 to the early 1900s to produce the multi-volume *History of Art in Antiquity*. Chipiez's illustrations virtually reconstructed ancient monuments of Greece, Persia, Egypt, Chaldea, Assyria, Phrygia, Lydia, Lycia, Sardinia, Judea, and Syria. His bird's-eye view of Persepolis (Fig. 1), view of the palace of Darius the Great (Fig. 3), and the Hall of a Hundred Columns (Fig. 4) brought the Achaemenid capital (c. 550–330 BCE) back to life. Persepolis, located 57 km northeast of Shiraz in southwestern Iran, has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1979. Modern 3D modeling and VR technologies now enable even more realistic reconstructions, as seen in the documentary *Persepolis: Hauptstadt Persiens* (CC BY-SA 4.0) produced by German public broadcaster ZDF for its Terra X series. The film traces the city's history from its founding in 500 BCE to its destruction by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE. Chipiez's drawings are considered precursors to today's digital reconstructions, though his were 2D while VR immerses viewers in a simulated 3D reality. The article also references Edmund Husserl's distinction between presentation (perception) and re-presentation (memory, expectation, fantasy) and John Berger's argument in *Ways of Seeing* (1972) that technology brings art to the viewer.