VR + 3D - Synagogue in Zamosc

View base panorama - version without 3D

VR + 3D: SYNAGOGUE IN ZAMOSC - REVITALIZATION OF AN ANCIENT MONUMENT

The visualisation above is a part of a larger project. The synagogue, built in the 17th century, had been a place of worship until World War II, when the Nazis turned the interior into a carpenters’ workshop. After the war the building housed a public library. During 44 years of communist regime in Poland the synagogue was getting more and more devastated.

Recently restituted by the Jewish community, the building is going to be renovated and rearranged in order to serve Zamosc citizens. The Jewish community together with the local authorities, NGO's and the Israeli Organization of Zamosc Jewry, aim to establish in the synagogue a cultural center that will provide housing and support for various local initiatives, as well as the Museum of Jews from the Zamość Area. Assigning new functions to the building is necessary to attain sponsorship for necessary conservation works.

How this panorama was made
The base panoramas were shot in the spring of 2005 (view base panos). After stitching, the panoramas were integrated with 3D objects in order to create interactive visualisations (see other examples of the same project). The final integration of panos with 3D was made with Adobe Photoshop.

Integration of QTVR panos with 3D objects seems to be very handy while visualizing the interior design of an old building.

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HISTORY IN BRIEF
Zamość is the only all-Renaissance city erected in Poland. It was established at the turn of the 16th century by the will of a single man, Jan Zamoyski, the Chancellor of Poland and one of the most influential people in the country's history.

Zamoyski invited Bernardo Morando, an architect from Italy, to design Zamość. Morando created a masterpiece: a city built exactly according to the rules set by the greatest theorists of Renaissance architecture, a "città ideale". But the city's splendid architecture is not the only thing to make it exceptional. From the very beginning Zamość was planned to be a multi-national metropolis, flourishing with tolerance and harmony.

Sephardic Jews from Spain, Turkey, Italy and the Netherlands settled in Zamość around 1588. Here they found a place to live calmly, benefitting from justice and tolerance. Together with Armenians, Greeks, Scots, Hungarians and Ukrainians, Jews contributed to the multi-ethnic and multi-national character of Zamość.

From the 18th century on, the Jewish community in Zamość was one of the most important centres of cultural, intellectual and religious life for the whole region.

Before the war there were over 12,000 Jews in Zamość; they made up 45% of the city's population. Of these, only 5,000 managed to escape from the Holocaust by crossing the river of Bug, which in 1939 became the border with the Soviet Union. The Nazis imprisoned the remaining ones in a ghetto, from which Jews were transported to the death camp in Bełżec.

The Zamość synagogue is unique both for being the only religious centre of the Sephardic community in Poland (until the 18th century, when it assimilated into the Ashkenazi community) and for its sophisticated architectural form.

The Zamość synagogue was erected at the beginning of the 17th century in the Renaissance style. The annexes for women were added later. The roof is hidden behind a splendid attic, distinctive for Polish architecture of the 16th and 17th century. The interior is both rich and elegant, with a remarkable stone Aron HaKodesh from the early 17th century and famous vaults decorated with elaborate stucco work (called the Kalisz-Lublin type of decoration).

In 1992 the Zamość synagogue, together with the historical urban complex of the city, was declared by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

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Europe / Poland

Lat: 50° 43' 5" N
Long: 23° 15' 13" E

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: Unknown / Undeclared.

camera: Canon 10D, lens: Canon EF 17-40 F4L