The descrip­tion “open-air muse­um” has often been applied, in var­i­ous sens­es both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive, to the coun­try of Italy in gen­er­al and the city of Rome in par­tic­u­lar. Indeed, only the imag­i­na­tion of a tru­ly blink­ered (or unusu­al­ly phone-addict­ed) tourist could fail to be cast back to antiq­ui­ty upon enter­ing its his­toric cen­ter, itself an offi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed UNESCO World Her­itage Site. Yet it also takes lit­tle expo­sure to the intense cul­ture of tourism and all it has wrought to won­der how Rome was back when, if you like, Rome was Rome: in the sec­ond cen­tu­ry AD, say, when its built envi­ron­ment reached the height of its glo­ry.

Manuel Bra­vo can show us. A YouTu­ber who cre­ates high­ly infor­ma­tive real, vir­tu­al, and hybrid video tours of famous ancient places, he’s pre­vi­ous­ly been fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his work on every­where from the Acrop­o­lis to the Sis­tine Chapel, to Paris and Pom­peii.

His “Vir­tu­al Rome” takes us on not a walk through the Eter­nal City of near­ly two mil­len­nia ago, but a flight: view­ers of mod­ern trav­el doc­u­men­taries will find its cam­era move­ments rem­i­nis­cent of noth­ing so much as drone pho­tog­ra­phy. This tech­nique pro­vides views even the most august ancient Roman cit­i­zens could nev­er have com­mand­ed.

Begin­ning on the Capi­to­line Hill, the most sacred of the sev­en such for­ma­tions with­in the orig­i­nal city walls, Bravo’s vir­tu­al cam­era pass­es the Tem­ples of Jupiter and Juno Mon­e­ta; the Tab­u­lar­i­um, which stored mail, the Roman Forum and its basil­i­cas; and the Curia Julia, where the sen­a­tors of the Roman Repub­lic met. Less­er-known loca­tions include the Ros­tra, named for the sea walls of cap­tured ene­my ships with which it was adorned, and from which the likes of Cicero would deliv­er their speech­es; the Regia, home to the Pon­tif­ex Max­imus, the pre­fect of Roman priests; and the “dark, stink­ing” under­ground facil­i­ty known as the Tul­lianum, now called Mamer­tine Prison. Parts of that last remain open for the appre­ci­a­tion of twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry tourists — or at least those will­ing to pay the ten-euro entrance fee.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rome Reborn: A New 3D Vir­tu­al Mod­el Lets You Fly Over the Great Mon­u­ments of Ancient Rome

Take Ani­mat­ed Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tours of Ancient Rome at Its Archi­tec­tur­al Peak (Cir­ca 320 AD)

An 8‑Minute Ani­mat­ed Flight Over Ancient Rome

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

The Chang­ing Land­scape of Ancient Rome: A Free Online Course from Sapien­za Uni­ver­si­ty of Rome

The Roman Colos­se­um Decon­struct­ed: 3D Ani­ma­tion Reveals the Hid­den Tech­nol­o­gy That Pow­ered Rome’s Great Are­na

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

A Man­hat­tan with­out sky­scrap­ers sounds dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, to imag­ine today. But such a place real­ly did exist, at least up until the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. While the title of the very first sky­scraper ever built may go to the Home Insur­ance Build­ing in Chica­go, New York City caught up so aggres­sive­ly there­after — in its char­ac­ter­is­tic style — that it soon became prac­ti­cal­ly syn­ony­mous with tall steel-framed tow­ers. The shape of mod­ern Man­hat­tan would sure­ly have been unimag­in­able to the first non-native arrivals in the ear­ly sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, the approach of whose ships you can see re-cre­at­ed in the ani­mat­ed time­lapse above.

The video is a pro­duc­tion of CITY 3D TIMELAPSE, a YouTube chan­nel pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its sim­i­lar­ly accel­er­at­ed visu­al­iza­tion of the evo­lu­tion of Paris. While that video had 23 cen­turies to com­press into a three-minute run­time, this new one on New York takes a leisure­ly-by-com­par­i­son eight min­utes to ren­der “just” 450 years or so of his­to­ry (at least after about twen­ty sec­onds spent in the native era’s mil­len­ni­um and a half).

But it also shows us the urban evo­lu­tion­ary process three times: the first zooms out to the whole of Man­hat­tan, the sec­ond focus­es on Low­er Man­hat­tan, and the third on Mid­town Man­hat­tan — a suit­able divi­sion, as any New York­er knows, for those mutu­al­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble civ­i­liza­tions.

Even if we’ve nev­er set foot there, we may well know that even old New York was once New Ams­ter­dam. That Dutch colo­nial era, as depict­ed in the time­lapse, is when the city begins. There fol­lows den­si­fi­ca­tion and expan­sion under Eng­lish rule, the mar­itime infra­struc­tur­al build-out of ear­ly Amer­i­ca, the ambi­tious grid-lay­ing under the Com­mis­sion­ers’ Plan of 1811, the relent­less nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry indus­tri­al­iza­tion that imbued the city with the might its rep­u­ta­tion still retains, the rise of the sky­scrap­ers that shaped (and con­tin­ue to shape) its sky­line, and final­ly the “glob­al­iza­tion era” in which we find our­selves today. That “we,” of course, includes not just New York­ers, but urban­ites every­where, for the evo­lu­tion of New York pro­duced not just a city, but in many respects, the city: the mod­el by which so many metrop­o­lis­es have been inspired to get a bit of the action for them­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 3D Ani­ma­tion Shows the Evo­lu­tion of New York City (1524 — 2023)

Watch a Time­lapse Video Show­ing the Cre­ation of New York City’s Sky­line: 1500 to Present

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

Watch Man­hat­ta, the First Amer­i­can Avant-Garde Film (1921)

Ani­ma­tions Visu­al­ize the Evo­lu­tion of Lon­don and New York: From Their Cre­ation to the Present Day

Watch the Evo­lu­tion of Paris Unfold in a Time­lapse Video, from 300 BCE to 2025

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Ask around for what every­one knows about Istan­bul (oth­er than that it used to be called Con­stan­tino­ple), and you’ll find that the pres­ence of Hagia Sophia there comes right to many a mind. Less like­ly to be men­tioned is its prone­ness to earth­quakes, though it tends to rank just below Tokyo on lists of cities under the great­est threat from fault lines below. These two char­ac­ter­is­tics turn out to have a con­nec­tion, man­i­fest in the ongo­ing seis­mic retro­fitting of Istan­bul’s sym­bol­ic cathe­dral-turned-mosque-turned-muse­um turned-mosque-again. Hagia Sophia is one of the most cel­e­brat­ed reli­gious build­ings stand­ing; keep­ing it that way requires a seri­ous engi­neer­ing effort, as explained in the new B1M video above.

Since it was first built in the fourth cen­tu­ry, Hagia Sophia has actu­al­ly sus­tained severe earth­quake dam­age quite a few times, includ­ing a com­plete col­lapse of its cupo­la in the year 558 and par­tial col­laps­es in the tenth and four­teenth cen­turies. The con­struc­tion of its famous cen­tral dome, along with the small­er sub-domes that sup­port it, gets a sec­tion of its own in the video.

Host Fred Mills also gives due men­tion to the eight green mar­ble columns that sup­port the upper floors of the cathe­dral, thought to have been recy­cled from the ruins of the Tem­ple of Artemis (one of the Sev­en Won­ders of the Ancient World), and the red stone set into the floor on which emper­ors were once crowned that would have been brought in from the Egypt­ian desert.

In these and oth­er respects, Hagia Sophia isn’t just a site of pil­grim­age and wor­ship, but also a ver­i­ta­ble built record of cen­turies upon cen­turies of Roman, Greek, Chris­t­ian, and Islam­ic civ­i­liza­tion. As evi­denced by the scaf­fold­ing cur­rent­ly up to facil­i­tate the project of ready­ing it for the inevitable com­ing of the big one — or rather, the big­ger one — the struc­ture con­tin­ues to change with time, though our era has an espe­cial­ly strong con­cern for pre­serv­ing what have by now become his­tor­i­cal fea­tures. Hence the efforts now being put into restora­tion: of the dome, nat­u­ral­ly, but also of the floors, columns, and mosaics. If all goes well, Hagia Sophia will con­tin­ue to stand as the most strik­ing struc­ture in Istan­bul’s already dra­mat­ic urban and geo­graph­i­cal set­ting for anoth­er mil­len­ni­um and a half, incor­po­rat­ing his­to­ry all the while.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Hagia Sophia: After 85 Years as a Muse­um, It’s Set to Become a Mosque Again

How the Byzan­tine Empire Rose, Fell, and Cre­at­ed the Glo­ri­ous Hagia Sophia: A His­to­ry in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

A Cul­tur­al Tour of Istan­bul, Where the Art and His­to­ry of Three Great Empires Come Togeth­er

360 Degree Vir­tu­al Tours of the Hagia Sophia

Hear the Hagia Sophia’s Awe-Inspir­ing Acoustics Get Recre­at­ed with Com­put­er Sim­u­la­tions, and Let Your­self Get Trans­port­ed Back to the Mid­dle Ages

Istan­bul Cap­tured in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Top­ka­ki Palace’s Impe­r­i­al Gate & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.