St Francis of Assisi Basilica

Now this is the sort of thing I love.

On 21st september at 6 p.m. italian time (9 a.m. pacific coast time, 12 p.m. east coast time, 5 p.m. London time) Assisi opened in Second Life.

The project, built by Wedoit s.a.s. (Assisi) with the partnership of Metafuturing S.l. (Madrid) and Euromedia Italia (Terni), aims to provide a wonderful experience of the Saint Francis’ Basilica in Assisi, one of the most famous religious sites in the world.

So when I found out about it, I had to go see it for myself!

While much of it is in italian, and I am not sure how to use the HUD provided (I am a newbie after all), I had a lot of fun walking around a virtual recreation of a site thousands of miles from me in real life.

Years ago, at the dawn of the world wide web, I stumbled across a site which gave a static picture visual tour of the Iranian city of Isfahan. I had enormous fun, even with slow and pokey downloads (this was before the age of DSL) exploring this site and seeing the many pictures of the city. Isfahan is a world heritage site and possibly one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Now, with second life, recreations that you walk around of places are possible. The Castle that was up for auction recently, for example.

I hope more organizations get together in SL to do things like this recreation of the Basilica of Assisi. I may never get the chance to visit it and see its architecture and artwork, and this is (one) way to see it at a distance.

I urge you to go and see the Basilica for yourself.