3D reconstructions and AI scenes planned for Kourion, including contests at its Roman stadium

Athletic contests in the ancient stadium of Kourion are to be recreated as digital scenes, one strand of a set of digital products for the archaeological site that the Limassol Tourism Development and Promotion Company (the Limassol Tourism Board) announced in September. The company is developing them with support from the Deputy Ministry of Tourism.

According to the board, three-dimensional reconstructions will show the monuments as they looked at their height, and artificial intelligence will animate episodes from the city's past. The stated aim is to promote Kourion abroad and to present its less-visited monuments alongside the famous ones.

The stadium lies west of the city, on the road towards the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates. It was built under the Antonine emperors in the mid-2nd century AD, an elongated U-shaped track with seven rows of seats for about 6,000 spectators [1, pp. 205–206]. The University of Pennsylvania Museum expedition had partly cleared it before 1953; the Department of Antiquities resumed work in 1963, finished in 1966 and rebuilt one section of seating on the southwest side [2, p. 18].