For the first time this April, visitors to Hadrian's Villa will be able to enjoy full-colour 3-D reconstructions of its glories as they stroll through the huge complex. Special palm pilots will bring the ruins back to life for adults - while younger visitors can have fun with a videogame-style ride through Roman history.
"Thanks to the new Archeoguida, visitors can admire the ruins while appreciating the site's original beauty on palm pilots and gameboys," said Culture Ministry Undersecretary Antonio Martusciello.
He said the new hand-held computerised guides should soon be available at other famous ancient sites like the Etruscan burial grounds at Tarquinia and the Greek temples at Paestum, replacing traditional audio-guides.
Antonia Recchia, head of the ministry's technological innovation department, said: "The images aren't an alternative to what people see. The computer-generated experience helps to enhance the real experience, which is complicated and sometimes hard to grasp".
"The ruins are imposing in their beauty and grandeur. But the visitor can be overwhelmed by them and find it difficult to get a sense of how the various parts linked up," she said. While adults press buttons to conjure up the original splendour of the buildings, kids are accompanied on a virtual tour by a wacky alien architect called Zurp and his pet mouse Zip, who also provide glimpses into how the Romans lived.
Hadrian's Villa, a few miles north of Rome at Tivoli,was the largest and richest Imperial Roman villa ever built. Started soon after Hadrian's investiture in 117 AD, it took ten years to build and the emperor himself showed his architectural skills in paying homage to the most beautiful buildings in his Empire.
Protected by a beautiful park, the villa is one of the most evocative classical sites in Italy and draws thousands of visitors a year.
One of the best-preserved parts is a recreation of the famous statue-lined pool shrine at Canopus in Egypt - one of many memorials to the emperor's boy-lover Antinoos. The architectural gems were linked by pathways and passages - including a subterranean one inspired by a classical description of the Underworld - to form a sort of small city, used by Hadrian as a summer court.
The vast site - at least the size of Pompeii - was looted by barbarians and plundered by later stone-hunters but has still disgorged hundreds of artistic treasures since the first excavations in the 16th century. The almost 300 art works discovered there are scattered around the museums of Europe.
