Vatican's new virtual tour of St. Peter’s Basilica on website

(July 30, 2010) Nothing can compare to a visit to Rome to admire the Sistine Chapel in person, or feel the "embrace" of the colonnade surrounding St. Peter's Square. But a two-year project accomplished by students of the Villanova University of Pennsylvania can bring part of the "Rome experience" into your home. The virtual tour of St. Peter’s is the fifth and latest Villanova project released by the Vatican: http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/san_pietro/vr_tour/index-en.html. You can also use your computer to tour the Basilica of St. Mary Major, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls and the Sistine Chapel. St. Paul's was the first to be made available, in 2008, St. John Lateran was ready last November and the Sistine Chapel went up in March.
A team of faculty and students from Villanova University spent hours shooting hundreds of photos of the basilica and months digitally stitching them together to create a virtual tour of the world’s largest Christian church online. The 360-degree images can be zoomed and rotated so that viewers have the sense of being within the rooms. However, as Chad Fahs, a digital media expert in Villanova’s Communication Department, affirmed, "Being in the Sistine Chapel is an experience that's difficult to describe, much less re-create on a two-dimensional screen."
Try for yourself the virtual tours: http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/index_en.html.