I don’t know how many of you watched the HBO series “Rome,” but if you’re anything like me, you watched and loved it. Why not take a virtual tour of the city that entertained us for weeks on end? Well, you can’t, really, but you can read about. Scholars from Italy and the U.S. have created Rome Reborn, a 3D model of the ancient city that’s rivals anything Rockstar has ever come up with. The project took some 10 years to complete and cost millions of dollars to fund. As such, you’re not going to find it on your favorite torrent site or anything. Instead, it’ll mainly be used by academics to better study life in ancient Rome. There’s also plans to have a version on display in modern day Rome, so that tourists can do a little more than take pictures of the Colosseum while posing funny poses.

Newsweek has several videos of the 3D Rome ready for viewing, accompanied by music that’s pretty much straight out of Final Fantasy.

Rome Reborn [Newsweek]