A new website will soon allow visitors to take a 3D tour of the city of Cologne as it would have been 2,000 years ago. The city, a major trade center, became the Roman Empire's major northern outpost.

The computer program, which is available in CAD (computer-aided design [or drafting]) and will soon be available online, allows visitors to "fly" over the city's massive walls, forum, temples and proconsul's palace. The program is a "collaboration between archaeologists, researchers and software experts drawn from the Archaeology Institute at the University of Cologne, the Köln International School of Design (KISD), the Cologne University of Applied Sciences, the University of Potsdam's Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) and Cologne's Romano-Germanic Museum."