EASTON, Pa. – Most visitors to Sicily's Monreale Cathedral spend limited time admiring its soaring golden mosaics before moving on.
But Maggie Thompson and Jasmin Lara aren't most visitors. The pair spent a week earlier this summer studying them one photograph at a time.
The Lafayette College students recently were part of an international team documenting the 12th-century cathedral – a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to one of the world's best-preserved Byzantine mosaic cycles – by capturing thousands of images set to be transformed into an interactive 3D model.
The project, led by Lafayette College art history professor Eric Hupe through the Zeuxis VR: Immersive Art History initiative, uses photogrammetry to create digital replicas of culturally significant sites that can be explored in virtual reality and preserved for future generations.
For Thompson, a rising junior from Phillipsburg, the appeal was the chance to experience art history beyond the classroom.
"I wanted something that was more than just reading a book and researching," she said. "Just having a hands-on project where I feel like I'm involved with actual art history, and I'm not just removed from it in a college miles away."
Lara, a rising junior from Easton, saw an opportunity to combine two passions.
"I'm a photographer, and I wanted to do something where photography and art history could kind of combine," she said.
"You really start to look at all the small details of whatever you're taking a picture of, and it just makes you appreciate the place so much more."
An uncommon perspective
The work itself also was incredibly demanding.
After arriving in Sicily, the team spent four straight days inside the cathedral, often working 12-hour shifts photographing mosaics from every conceivable angle while visitors continued touring the church.
The long hours gave the students an uncommon perspective.
Using telephoto lenses, they spent minutes holding perfectly still to capture a single sharp image dozens of feet above the cathedral floor.
"You have to stare," Thompson said. "You can just see the stylization of the mosaic, and you have to kind of sit there for a while because with the 200 (millimeter lens), even a breath will make it shake."
For Hupe, those quiet moments are part of what makes the project valuable.
"No outside visitor is going to fly up to the mosaics," he said. "But because of the nature of the work, you are forced to do that."
The digital models are designed to do something similar for everyone else.
By stitching together thousands of photographs, the team creates immersive experiences that allow users to zoom in on details, revisit sites repeatedly and explore places many people may never have the opportunity to see in person.
"If you have a VR model, you can always go back to it," Lara said. "You don't have to travel all the way there. There's always something new to learn."
With war, natural disasters and time itself posing a threat to historic sites, VR technology is playing an increasingly important role in preservation.
Laser scans helped guide the reconstruction of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris after the devastating 2019 fire that broke out underneath the eaves of the roof and engulfed the spire, Hupe noted.
"If we didn't have that record – that digital model – we wouldn't really know what was there," he said.
He hopes projects like the one at Monreale inspire more people to value cultural heritage before it disappears.
"I think that we live in a world where digital tools are allowing cultural heritage to be everyone's heritage," Hupe said. "It democratizes it. It makes it more accessible and open."
"I just want people to value it more because it's taken for granted too often, and then when it's lost, it's lost forever."
The students said the technology also changes the way people learn.
"There are scenes ... and there's just the whole story," Thompson said of the cathedral's mosaics, which tell a continuous visual story from the Old Testament through the New Testament, featuring hundreds of distinct figures.
"You can go back in (to the VR experience), scroll through every single one of these and choose your favorite ones."
Without crowds pushing visitors through, she said, users can take the time to study details they might otherwise miss.
Lara hopes that accessibility will inspire curiosity in people who may never have the opportunity to travel overseas.
"My family's from the Dominican Republic. Most of them are not going to be able to go to Italy," she said.
"I think art history is something that when I was younger I was like, this looks like more for researchers and high-up people, but this makes it feel so much more accessible and something that is for me and for any other person like me."
'Can only benefit efforts to conserve'
Hupe said the same technology that is preserving one of the world's great medieval cathedrals could someday help preserve pieces of the Lehigh Valley's own history.
His team already has created a digital model of Easton's Bachmann Publick House, and he sees opportunities throughout the region to document and interpret historic places.
Among the sites he believes could benefit are Bethlehem's iconic blast furnaces and former industrial buildings that are too dangerous for the public to enter.
"The SteelStacks are an amazing, amazing site," Hupe said. "There are so many former warehouse buildings or factory buildings that are off limits because of the risk... I would love for those places to be explorable."
He envisions virtual experiences that go beyond simply recreating buildings. A digital model of the blast furnaces, for example, could show them operating as they once did, complete with narration from former steelworkers explaining what visitors are seeing.
"I think this technology can only benefit efforts to conserve and bring attention to important sites that are at risk of getting lost," Hupe said.
Hupe acknowledged that some people argue once a place has been digitally preserved, there is less reason to save the physical structure. He disagrees.
"I actually don't think that's how it works," he said. "I think that the model gets interest and gives people something to think about. Maybe we should be focusing on this and preserving this."
Instead, he sees digital preservation as a way to spark curiosity and encourage people to visit places they might otherwise overlook.
"If you're going to New York," he said, "why not think about where the steel that built New York came from? Go to Bethlehem and see the industry that made that place possible."
He believes the Lehigh Valley's history deserves the same attention often given to centuries-old landmarks overseas.
"We exist on land that is just as storied and historied as the land there in Italy," Hupe said. "But it's just more of it is visible and remains there than probably here."
The Monreale scans are now being processed into digital models that will eventually be available through the Zeuxis VR website.
Hupe also plans to begin testing a new virtual reality application with educators later this year before making it more widely available to schools and, eventually, the public.