Celebrated Italian church featuring art by Giotto and Cimabue preserved through new digital reconstruction project

A free digital platform called Preserving Assisi now offers a 360-degree, first-person reconstruction of the Unesco-listed Basilica of St Francis of Assisi, enabling close study of artworks by Cimabue, Giotto, and Pietro Lorenzetti. Developed by Haltadefinizione and launched on Wednesday, the project is based on 27,000 high-definition photographs taken over this and last year, producing 116 gigapixel images; Lorenzetti’s Crucifixion (around 1320) appears via an image of nearly eight billion pixels. Users can zoom into details such as Giotto’s Homage of a Simple Man (around 1300) in the Upper Basilica and navigate the Upper and Lower churches and exterior like a map interface. The initiative aims both to broaden access and to create a time-stamped record for future conservation research, echoing how high-definition documentation aided restoration after the 1997 earthquakes (5.7 and 6.0) that damaged Giotto and Cimabue cycles.

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