Step inside Assisi: famous basilica recreated in billion-pixel detail
You can wander through the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi from your phone. The free platform Preserving Assisi went live on 16 September 2026 with 360-degree views of the church's upper and lower levels, walked at eye level using on-screen arrows, according to ARTnews. You can stop anywhere. Then zoom right into the paint.
The church in Umbria in central Italy is a UNESCO World Heritage site, a United Nations listing for places of outstanding value to humanity. It is really two churches in one, an Upper Basilica built directly above a Lower Basilica in the first half of the 13th century. The walls are covered with work by medieval painters including Cimabue, Giotto and Pietro Lorenzetti, according to The Art Newspaper.
Close-ups include Giotto's Homage of a Simple Man, painted around 1300 in the nave, the long central section, of the upper church. In the lower church there is Pietro Lorenzetti's Crucifixion, painted around 1320 for the south transept, the side arm of the building. The Crucifixion alone is presented as an image of nearly eight billion pixels.
The site was built by Haltadefinizione, a company that specialises in ultra-high-resolution imaging for heritage. Its team took 27,000 high-definition photographs during 2025 and 2026 and combined them into 116 gigapixel images, each one stitched from hundreds of shots to allow extreme close looking. The wider project also used 3D surveys to record the shape of the building.
That kind of record matters in Assisi. In 1997 two earthquakes measuring 5.7 and 6.0 struck the area and badly damaged parts of the basilica, including Giotto's scenes from the life of St Francis and works by Cimabue. A photography campaign by Franco Cosimo Panini Editore happened to be under way at the time, and its sharp images proved vital for the restoration that followed.
The new platform is intended as a fixed record of the building at one moment, so researchers can compare it later and spot change. Described as a "digital twin", a virtual copy that mirrors the real place, it offers a stable visual reference to revisit for brushwork and cracks, as reported by Artnet. More photography will continue over the coming months, with new material added gradually.
What makes this stand out is the access. No ticket. No queue. Just time with paint that is more than 700 years old, closer than you could stand in the church itself.
