What sets Dr. Juan de Lara apart from the thousands—mostly tourists—enjoying a stroll in the shadow of the Acropolis on a breezy summer afternoon is something not everyone has: a deep love and admiration for ancient Greece. The Oxford archaeologist and technology enthusiast first visited the Acropolis and the Parthenon, Greece’s most iconic monument, over twenty years ago, around the time of the Athens Olympic Games.
After experiencing its awe and size up close and personal for the first time on that early morning (so as to avoid tourist crowds), Greece instantly became his favorite country in the world, he says.
De Lara has visited Greece countless times since, and he has also conducted archaeological excavations, but it wasn’t until recently that he made headlines with his groundbreaking work on the digital reconstruction of the Parthenon, whereby he meticulously employed 3D models. His work now allows us to experience this awe-inspiring temple at its zenith; currently, Parthenon 3D is the closest we can get to a time machine, transporting us to the Parthenon as Phidias and the architects Ictinus and Callicrates originally conceived of it.
Greek Reporter met with de Lara during his recent visit to Athens for a sit-down interview, during which he spoke about the secrets and complexities of the Parthenon, his 3D project, how technology can inspire and revive ancient works, and about his incessant passion for ancient Greece.
Driven by a desire to “educate while entertaining,” de Lara combined his past experience as a video game designer with his academic research to create a project that could bring the past to life. He notes that while academic research is often “rather dry,” a video offers a “more meaningful and transformative way” for people around the world to access and appreciate history.
His deep connection to the Parthenon stems from his youth. “My relationship to this monument goes back to when I was a child,” he says, recalling a Spanish cartoon he watched at age five that featured ancient Greek deities and a replica of the Parthenon. This sparked an interest that grew into an “obsession about understanding ancient Greece, not only the visuals but also the culture, the society, the religion.”
Parthenon’s colossal gold and ivory statue of Athena
De Lara was particularly captivated by the Parthenon’s colossal gold and ivory statue of Athena, an artwork so grand it was said to have cost twice as much as the building itself. This masterpiece vanished long ago, likely melted down after being moved to Constantinople. “All my life I wanted to try to imagine what it would have felt to see this masterpiece,” he explains, which became a central goal of his project.
To reconstruct the lost interior, de Lara undertook a meticulous process of gathering data, including measurements and historical records. He credits the Acropolis Restoration Service for their invaluable assistance, noting that their team “guided me well” and were “participants of this success.” The recreation of the 12-meter Athena statue was especially challenging. De Lara scanned and analyzed numerous Roman-era copies of the statue, overlapping them in 3D to identify and preserve common elements. It was through this comparative analysis that “the statue of Athena came to light.”
Other details of his reconstruction are equally fascinating. He notes that the small, high-up windows in the Parthenon’s chamber, which were discovered in 1984, likely served a dual purpose: to illuminate an interior frieze and to serve as a ventilation channel for smoke from the “substantial use of incense in the rituals.” De Lara paints a vivid picture of the interior as a “dark cell” where the gold and ivory statue would shine as if “emerging from darkness,” surrounded by the overwhelming scent of incense—a smell he says was “related to divinity” in both antiquity and Christian times.
This use of light and choreography, he argues, reflects a universal religious tendency to “stage the divine.” The Parthenon’s design, with its transition from the bright Athens sky to the dark temple chamber, created a “theater around the activity of liturgy” that was meant to impress and awe visitors before they encountered the goddess.
The project has had a significant impact, especially in Greece. “What really caught my attention is the way the Greeks were responding to it,” he says, with many expressing a sense of pride but also a “sense of nostalgia” for the nation’s past greatness. He hopes his work can inspire a new generation, adding, “if I can inspire just one little child somewhere in the world and fall in love with Greece… I think I would have done my job.”
De Lara believes that while some details of ancient reconstructions will always be open to debate, modern technology allows us to get “really close enough” to the truth. His own reconstructions, he says, are about “30 percent guesswork and educated guesses,” with the remaining 70 percent based on known facts.
His work on the Parthenon is far from over. He plans to develop a virtual reality experience of the interior and hopes to unlock more secrets about the temple’s role in rituals and its function as both a treasury and a temple. The methodology he developed for this project can also be applied to other structures, and he hopes to one day use it to bring to life the “mysterious” Temple of Apollo in Bassae.
De Lara’s dazzling digital reconstruction of the Parthenon at its zenith and its secrets in ancient Greece
For four years, Dr. Juan de Lara, of the “Parthenon 3D” project, recreated the ancient marvel which has commanded the Athenian skyline for nearly 2,500 years.
At the heart of “Parthenon 3D” lies its undeniable centerpiece: the almost 40-foot-tall statue of the goddess Athena Parthenos, simply known as Athena. This magnificent work, crafted by the renowned sculptor Phidias, who also oversaw the rest of the Parthenon’s intricate sculptural decoration, famously cost twice as much as the building itself.
Phidias designed the statue with both brilliance and foresight. The gold that adorned Athena’s figure was not permanently fixed but fashioned into removable plaques, allowing them to be taken down if the city ever needed to reclaim its wealth. The sculptor had also perfected an ingenious technique for shaping the ivory—unrolling it, softening it, and molding it into place before securing it to metal bands built around a wooden core.
Though the original Athena statue has long been lost to history, sufficient documentation allowed de Lara to meticulously recreate every detail, from the flowing folds of her golden robes to the delicate cracks in her ivory skin.
During the quadrennial Panathenaic Festival, the Parthenon was designed to allow sunlight to penetrate at a precise angle, creating a seemingly supernatural illumination of the goddess against the surrounding shadows.
This awe-inspiring effect was, of course, no accident. While one might consider the Parthenon divinely inspired, it is best understood as a testament to meticulous human ingenuity. For ancient Greek worshippers, Athena’s radiant illumination was amplified by strategically placed roof apertures, reflective water pools, and other reflective materials— sophisticated elements that might surprise most modern visitors.
In Parthenon 3D, every element of the temple—from the architectural details to the sculptural program—has been meticulously reconstructed to provide an accurate and immersive experience of the original structure.
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