The treasures of Mount Athos are now digitally available to all at the “Athos Digital Heritage” website.
Over 2 million digital images of documents, books, manuscripts and 27 thousand artefacts, as well as 3D imaging of monuments, virtual tours of monasteries and educational apps, are now online , enabling both the public and scientists to navigate over in this holy land and discover its rare cultural wealth.
The “Athos Digital Heritage” project was carried out by the OTE Group on behalf of the Holy Community of Mount Athos.
It is the largest digital culture project in Greece, completed over the course of four years.
Over two hundred experts, including Byzantinologists, theologians, historians, writers, architects and the monks themselves, worked for the documentation of the material.
Τhe project objective is to preserve, safeguard and promote the Athonite State’s wealth of cultural artefacts and to make it accessible to the global community.
Konstantinos Patseas, Head of Design and Coordinator of the “Athos Digital Heritage” project for the Holy Community of Mount Athos, stated:
“The Athos Digital Heritage project is an effort to introduce further the Orthodox Christian tradition to the modern world – a spiritual gift to the young generation, which in the digital world embraces other channels and means of communication. Athos Digital Heritage contributes to the democratization of research and education by creating a functional link between tradition and technology. From a purely technological standpoint, this is a milestone project for Greece, because the technologies and methodologies used to implement the project will be adopted as best practices for all similar projects involving preservation and digitization of cultural goods.”
Through the digitization and documentation of the Athonite State’s historical archive and works of art, countless items from all fields of artistic creation and Orthodox Christian art were digitized :
documents, manuscripts, rare books, sculptures, mosaics, portable icons, metalworks and textiles, religious vessels, robes, coins and architectural designs, more than 500 hours of audiovisual, as well as almost 25,000 pages of modern, original, unpublished material with a psycho-beneficial character.
The project also includes a Data Center in Karyes and a remote access VPN network in order to transfer the large volume of digitized material, so that it could be documented by the scientists.
The “Athos Digital Heritage” website is available in five languages: Greek, English, Bulgarian, Russian, and Serbian.
The Chairman and CEO of the OTE Group, Michael Tsamaz, stated:
“The spiritual and historical legacy of Mount Athos is priceless. Through technology, we will continue to create a better world for all.”
