OTE makes Mount Athos treasures available with “Athos Digital Heritage” (video)

The treasures of Mount Athos are now digitally available to all, with OTE Group having implemented the largest digital culture project in Greece, completed over the course of four years, protothema.gr reports.

Through the digitization and documentation of the Athonite State’s historical archive and works of art, more than 2 million digital images of documents, books, manuscripts, and 27 thousand artifacts, as well as 3D imaging of monuments, virtual tours of monasteries and educational apps, are now available on www.mountathos.org, enabling both the public and scientists to navigate over in this holy land and discover its rare cultural wealth.

“Athos Digital Heritage”, a project with global reach, was carried out by the OTE Group on behalf of the Holy Community of Mount Athos. Τhe project objective was to preserve, safeguard and promote the Athonite State’s wealth of cultural artifacts, through the digitization and documentation of the historical archive and works of art, and also to make it available online to the global community.

The “Athos Digital Heritage” is the biggest digital culture project ever carried out in Greece. It is an ark of knowledge that includes the cultural legacy of the Monasteries of the Holy Mountain in digital form. This multifaceted project lasted four years.

Konstantinos Patseas, Head of Design and Coordinator of the “Athos Digital Heritage” project for the Holy Community of Mount Athos, noted: “The Athos Digital Heritage project is an effort to introduce further the Orthodox Christian tradition to the modern world – a spiritual gift to the young generation, which in the digital world embraces other channels and means of communication.”

In the context of this multi-layered project, the OTE Group:

– Digitized countless items from all fields of artistic creation and Orthodox Christian art: documents, manuscripts, rare books, sculptures, mosaics, portable icons, metalworks and textiles, religious vessels, robes, coins and architectural designs, more than 500 hours of audiovisual, as well as almost 25,000 pages of modern, original, unpublished material with a psycho-beneficial character.
– Supplied the IT equipment and software required for the digitization of the material.
– Upgraded the telecommunications infrastructure on Mount Athos by installing state-of-the-art
fixed and mobile networks, COSMOTE Fiber, and COSMOTE 4G.
– Implemented a Data Center in Karyes and a remote access VPN network in order to transfer the large volume of digitized material so that it could be documented by the scientists.
– Created the www.mountathos.org in five languages: Greek, English, Bulgarian, Russian, and Serbian – with over two million digital images, documenting every aspect of the Holy Monasteries’ cultural wealth and giving everyone the opportunity to explore the mysteries of this Holy Land and
discover the rare treasures of the Athonite State through virtual tours, electronic catalogues of digitized material, and educational applications.
– Collaborated with numerous teams of distinguished scientists. Over two hundred experts, including Byzantinologists, theologians, historians, writers, architects, and the monks themselves, worked for the documentation of the material. The know-how was transferred to appointed representatives of the monasteries.

The “Athos Digital Heritage” was part of the Operational Programme Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation (EPAnEK) and co-funded by the EU.

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Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons License: CC-BY-SA Copyright: Gabriel