Ancient sights revealed in Antonine Wall app

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Edel Kenealy

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Published: 2 Apr 2015 07:300 comments

VISITORS to the Antonine Wall will be able to see what the ancient structure would have looked like in the Roman era thanks to a new app.

STRUCTURES: Previously unseen sights will be visible around sections of the wall

The app uses “reality technology” to help visitors explore the world heritage site, which begins in Old Kilpatrick and stretches some 60km across the Scottish central belt.

Created by Germans, the innovative technology has been used on a Roman frontier in Bavaria and is said to bring this historic place “back to life”.

The Antonine Wall app will draw on 3D laser scanning work and interactive 3D models of museum artefacts taken from the wall.

This will give visitors a better idea of how points of interest, such as the fort at Rough Castle, or the bath house at Bar Hill, would have looked when the wall operated as a frontier.

Historic Scotland, the national agency leading the project, plans to work with local museums to scan artefacts from the wall in order to create an accurate representation of what life was like in Roman times.

Content will be commissioned and developed by Historic Scotland and the five local authorities along the line of the wall including West Dunbartonshire Council.

The development of the Antonine Wall app has only been made possible through the donation of data from the Bavarian Museums Service, who created the earlier app in Germany.

The collaboration agreement between Historic Scotland and the German partners was signed at Edinburgh Castle by senior staff from each of the organisations.

Barbara Cummins, director of heritage management at Historic Scotland, said: “Signing this agreement is a significant step forward, not just in digitally interpreting the Antonine Wall, but in fostering strong working partnerships with international colleagues. We are grateful to our colleagues in Germany for generously allowing us to use the technology they have developed, and look forward to further collaboration in the future.”

The first version of the app will be available for both i-phone and Android by April 2016.

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