The Archaeological Museum of Isthmia
3D Virtual Tour
Overview
Developed an immersive virtual tour using Matterport for the Archaeological Museum of Isthmia, in Isthmia Greece. The tour and model span the main gallery of the museum, as well as over 300,000 sqft of the attached ancient ruins, including a Temple, Stadium, Ampitheater, an impressive Roman Bath, and more.
Project Goal
Director of Excavations at Isthmia, Jon M. Frey, along with Michigan State University’s Digital Media Specialist, Daniel Trego, sought to improve the museum and site’s physical and digital accessibility. Due to historical protections, the museum and archeological site have a number of physical obstacles, limiting the experience for any non-able-bodied visitors. Enhancing the museum’s digital outreach was also a priority with desires to lower barriers to entry in the field of Archaeology as well as making the physcial database of information specific to Isthmia more accesible to scholars and curious visitors alike.
Creation
The project was completed in 2025 after 3 weeks of on-site work including observing visitor behavior, planning scanning routes, preparing the grounds for documentation (lots of weeding), and finally taking over 1500 scans. Museum scan placements were thoughtfully dictated by natural observation of visitors’ foot traffic, with site scans taking into account both the intuitive walking paths, as well as additional access to vantage points and areas that would otherwise be off-limits to visitors regardless of physical ability. This ensures that the digital model retains value, and can further enhance the expereince, for those who are active visitors as well.
Impact
The project currently serves as a digital companion to the Museum, with plans to install a permanent touch-screen display in the Museum’s vistor center. It has also been used by Jon Frey to promote digital humanities work within the field of Archaeology at a number of industry conferences. Following it’s completion, the model was used as a case study for how Matterport models and similar digital twins can be used to improve preservation and accesibility for historical sites; findings from months of our various user testing and data analysis were presented at the National Conference of Undergraduate Research in April of 2026.