Virtual Travel

(attn: Grandma – do not print this out, it is all pictures, and will look better on the  computer screen)

Sometime during our time in Rome, it became obvious to Cari that I had an advantage over her in navigation.  Sometimes I just knew where landmarks were and how to get to our destinations, when I had no business knowing.  I was forced to concede that although I’d never visited Rome, I had already spent hours and hours scampering around a video game version of it…  The same was true for Florence, Venice, and Jerusalem. 

Since then this blog post has been hotly anticipated (by Cari).  So, I present to you

THE GRAND ADVENTURE ASSASSIN’S CREED MASH UP POST

Assassin’s Creed is a popular series of video games which are set in some of the famous and interesting historical places of the Mediterranean world.  So if you are spending 6 weeks in Italy, chances are that your rout will overlap with the Assassin’s Creed world.  With the exception of Monteriggioni, there was nowhere that we went specifically because of the games, but for most of our time in Italy (and Jerusalem) I had this weird feeling of digital déjà vu.

The above map (click to enlarge any particular image) shows all of our destinations in shades of blue and green… And then the cities which I have traveled to through the magic of Sony are shown with red arrows.   In order of our itinerary, they were:

Florence

Showing that they correctly modeled a surviving landmark isn’t that cool; not as cool as finding yourself just knowing your way around between them, but it is an easy likeness to capture with one image.  Here we are in front of the Santa Maria Novella Church.

If you had asked me about the façade from what I learned in Architectural history class, I would have said that it was a late renaissance addition to a medieval church… but that would have only been partially correct, because here it is in Assassins Creed in 1499 or whatever.  And I trust that they got it right!  Early Renaissance it was!  No research was performed in the writing of this post.

Here is Cari and Ezio (a character from the game) around the back of the Pitti Palace.  No, nothing is exactly the same, but they got the right feeling.

Here’s a view WNW toward the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio.  We took the picture from The Piazza Michelangelo.

Same sort of thing.  The Video Game City is always much smaller than the real city, but it is so much more real than a map.

San Gimignano

There are the steps down to the main square in the center of town.  Scarily Similar.

The well in the center of the square where we sat and ate pizza was a historical FACT, just look at the picture of the game!  The only thing missing from the game were the 3-4 Medieval Torture museums in this small walled city.

Yup

Whoops, I can’t tell which one is from the game.

Monteriggioni

Cari took a day of rest in Colle Val d’Elsa and I walked to this tiny walled city- really the only destination inspired by the game.  It was the Assassin’s HQ, so how could I miss that?   The inside was actually disappointingly dissimilar (with such a small place, I would have though that they could just reproduce it exactly, but they didn’t), but walking up to the south gate felt pretty much the same in real life as it had in the game.

Rome

Yup, they did the Pantheon right.

This is me in front of Constantine’s arch.

Here is the view of the NE corner of the Palatine hill (sadly closed when we were in Rome.  But- it is so similar!  That gets me more than the single monuments (like the Pantheon).

This shows how the virtual version is shrunk down.  The Piazza del Popolo has an obelisk in the center and the double churches at the South end.  The two pictures show the distance between them… but in the game, it’s a little different.

Venice

St Marks Square looking North from the water

Looking East along the South side of the Doge Palace

Istanbul

I actually didn’t play the one featuring Istanbul until after the trip, leaving me helpless as a kitten (of which there were lots) in navigating. 

Here is Ezio and Me in the Grand Bazaar

Valens Aqueduct by night. 

Jerusalem

Here is the Dome of the Rock viewed from the entrance to the al Aqsa Mosque.  The game version of the Temple Mount was smaller, but very similar to real life… probably more similar than it was to real life ca. 1192.

Here is Cari and Altair in front of the Tower of David /Herod’s palace around the Jaffa Gate. 

Looking South from above the Damascus Gate.  I see it. 

Looking from the Armenian Quarter East across the temple mount toward the Mount of Olives.

So in conclusion, Video Games helped me navigate some of the cities we found ourselves in as tourists.  And all the trips which the computer modelers treated themselves to were not entirely wasted.