Prince Philippos Gallery Project

The Institute for Digital Archaeology’s new Prince Philippos Gallery Project invites visitors into a virtual reimagining of the space currently housing the Parthenon Sculptures in the British Museum. This immersive online experience will use VR technology to present an engaging and historically accurate vision of ancient Greek art and culture. Virtual environments, now used in many of the BM’s peer museums, allow visitors to explore galleries with unlimited flexibility, examine objects at multiple scales, and engage with interpretive layers that would be impossible in a physical setting.

In this re-envisioned gallery, visitors will encounter treasures from the Acropolis Museum in Athens, including masterpieces such as the iconic mask of Agamemnon. These works will stand alongside perfect Pentelic-marble reconstructions of the BM’s Parthenon sculptures, created by the IDA, and carefully selected Hellenic objects from the British Museum’s collection. For the first time, viewers will also see digitally restored surface paint, revealing the vibrant blues, reds, and gilded details that once animated the sculptures – details long lost but crucial to understanding their original aesthetic impact.

By bringing the world of classical Greece to life with clarity, coherence, and flexibility, the Prince Philippos Gallery Project will help the British Museum understand how it can strengthen its core educational mission without relying on contested original materials so strongly connected with the age of Empire. In this way, we hope to contribute to a constructive pathway toward a mutually agreeable future in which the needs of all stakeholders — both British and Greek — are met.

Click the image above to explore the virtual gallery space in 360 degree video. On your browser, use the arrows in the navigation circle in the top left to rotate the viewing angle, or watch in 3D using Google Cardboard or your preferred VR app. You can adjust the video quality to suit your bandwidth via “settings”.