MOSUL: An Iraqi museum is using computer technology and virtual reality headsets to turn back time, so visitors can explore heritage sites destroyed by terrorists and in battles to defeat them.
Daesh captured a third of Iraq in a lightning offensive in 2014, seizing the northern city of Mosul as their stronghold and vandalizing or destroying a swath of cultural sites across the country.
Now, using thousands of photographs, a group of local engineers have given a virtual rebirth to five historic sites in Mosul and the broader Nineveh province, including a mosque and its leaning minaret.
“It takes you to another world,” said Mahiya Youssef, pulling the VR goggles off her rose-covered hijab at the Mosul Heritage House museum, after exploring the 3D images of damaged buildings.
“I really wish it was the real Mosul, not just a virtual version,” added Youssef, 50, who works in a food factory in the northern city. “The return to reality is painful.”
Daesh’s then chief, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, made his only confirmed public appearance at Mosul’s Al-Nuri Mosque, where he declared the establishment of a “caliphate.”
Mosul’s Old City was reduced to rubble during the battle to retake the city, including the mosque and its adjacent leaning minaret, nicknamed Al-Hadba or the “hunchback.”
Iraqi authorities have accused Daesh of planting explosives at the site before their withdrawal. Only the minaret’s base survived.
VR technology has been used before to recreate the heritage destroyed by Daesh, including a UNESCO-backed exhibit in the US. But this museum brings sites back to life for the people who live in Mosul.
“Many children have never seen the Al-Nuri Mosque and its Al-Hadba minaret,” said 29-year-old Ayoub Younes, the museum’s founder.
“We try, through virtual reality, to let the person experience visiting those sites and retrieve those memories.”