April 18, 2021- Ever wonder how Salona looked all those years ago? One Dalmatian duo has revived ancient Salona in 3D!

Dalmatinski Portal reports that Dalmatian duo Stipan Ujdur from Opuzen and Frane Bilić from Zadar initiated the reconstruction of another Dalmatian Roman geolocation - ancient Salona. Ujdur creates the 3D models, video animation, VR, and photo rendering, while Bilić will program the final visualizations for multimedia in the 'MediaUp' studio.

"The project is very demanding, and it is difficult to do because Salona is large, but very little researched, so only the explored localities will be processed in the scenes. So far, five scenes have been made from a total of 12 to 14," Ujdur said. 

"These scenes are more or less researched, so it is possible to model them in 3D format. I hope no one will blame me for some inaccuracies or copyright. Overall, it should be almost by the end of this year at the latest," Ujdur added.

Porta Caesarea was the monumental city gate of Salona. While Salona was still within the framework of the Urbs Vetus, this gate served as the eastern entrance to the city.

In front of them was a non-Romanesque settlement that depended on works in the city and the sale of agricultural products.

There were significant changes in front of the gates of Porto Caesarea and the ramparts. There are foundations for the city insula district; these are multi-story buildings built by the city for deserving citizens and social cases. They were usually 50 x 25 x 20 meters in size, with different variations in architecture, with public fountains for water and laundry.

On the left, in front of Porta Caesarea, a non-Roman settlement was evicted in front of Porta Andetria, and in their place, a settlement was built for workers in the "industrial zone."

The industrial zone was near the bridge, and numerous workshops, warehouses, and dwellings were built for the workers who worked in them. There were also workshops on poles or with mills that exploited the water potential to power the machines.

The peristyle was connected to all the rooms within the spa; this was most likely the atrium, while the building had a domus. As a rule, one entered the peristyle and from there into the frigidarium. Various bath aids were sold on the peristyle, from the latest baths to massage oils, various depilatory preparations, from razors to beeswax.

The frigidarium is a room with a pool where there is cold water, used before hot water and sauna, then at the end of all treatments to close the pores on the skin.

From the peristyle, one entered the frigidarium, from which one went to the left door to the locker room. After a bath in the cold pool, you'd go to the right door to the warm part of the spa. These baths were named 'balneum.'

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February the 1st, 2021 - Step back in time to ancient Zadar, or perhaps it's better to call it ancient Jader, back in the times when it was under the iron fist of Roman rule.

As Morski writes, it took Stipan Ujdur from Opuzen in southern Dalmatia six months of intensive work on 3D modelling to complete the video animation and modeling of ancient Zadar/Jader ie today's City of Zadar as it looked back in Roman times.

''Frane Bili from Zadar will programme applications for smartphones and VR glasses in his MediaUp studio, so ancient Zadar will be completely processed for all. The work on the 3D modelling lasted a full six months and it involved daily hard work. The model was made to the maximum authenticity of the original Zadar/Jader back during ancient times. This was really difficult because I had to search the foreign archives for everything about ancient Zadar, Jader. It’s so exhausting that I really wouldn’t do a project like this again. It's important to acquaint your readers with the fact that this is, unfortunately, the work of a pensioner and is not a Hollywood production, and I hope that no one will blame me for any potential inaccuracies or copyright issues,'' explained Stipan Ujdur.

''Ancient Zadar is really a big 3D model with many significant neighbourhoods to process, but the big problem are the documents for that time, drawings, floor plans or illustrations, domestic and foreign sources were used, with locals, a big problem is unavailability, vagueness, incompleteness, all of that, unfortunately is our great pain. Honestly, I couldn’t do anything without foreign sources of documentation, Croatian works can be seen, but if I want to do something concrete then I have to look for other sources. The geolocation of the scenes is located via the Google Earth 3D map, so it is faithful to the original ancient location,'' said Ujdur as he recounted the shots we can see in the video.

The first scene is in front of the entrance to the city, as ancient Zadar was surrounded by ramparts on all sides, there were three gates on the southeast rampart, one door was used for traffic, people used the other for goods and the middle one was for various different purposes. In front of the ramparts was a colony of those who were not Romans by birth, but performed various hard physical jobs, and raised cattle, vegetables and sold them in the city. This scene shows olive, cypress and laurel plantations of typical Mediterranean plants that were in this area in that period. 

Watch the video of ancient Zadar as it once was under Roman rule in the video above.

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