Aspasia TSATSOULI, Dipylon Society For the Study of Ancient Topography, Athens, Greece
Keywords: ancient walls, Athens, archaeology, history
Walk the Wall Athens is a bilingual innovative application available for free that allows the user to wander, literally and metaphorically, through the streets of Athens in order to discover the traces of the ancient city wall and recover the monument from oblivion.
The Themistoklean wall surrounds Athens like a historical chain. The areas it runs through are often associated with references in ancient written sources, whereas at each step one has the opportunity to see the exact boundary of the city that existed from Classical times (5th century BC) to the Early Byzantine period (6th century AD), that is, a course of approximately 1000 years.
From a total of 180 sites, the interactive map will guide you step by step to the 35 Points of Interest (POIs): it will take you to squares and narrow streets, lead you down the basements of buildings, will have you look through glass floors and shop windows, all the while providing you with a beautifully narrated audio tour and additional specialized information in the form of texts, images, drawings and accurate coordinates; a glossary and a timeline are also included.
Walk the Wall Athens has been created by archaeologists specializing in ancient topography. The Dipylon team that designed it had the vision of using digital technologies to enhance a mostly non-visible, fragmented and forgotten monument, a project which constitutes a long-term contribution to the preservation and presentation of European archaeological heritage in the everyday urban context.
The app was awarded the SILVER award in the category of Tourism/Culture at the Mobile Excellence Awards (2018); it was also nominated as the best national digital solution for Greece at the 2018 World Summit Awards and made it to the shortlist.
For Android through Google Play https://play.google.com/store/ apps/details?id=gr.fluidmedia. walkthewallathens For iPhone through App Store https://itunes.apple.com/gr/ app/walk-the-wall-athens/