ИСТИНА

The study of evolution of historical urban landscape is attracting more and more attention in the context of growing interest in the reconstruction and preservation of cultural heritage and the accelerating processes of urbanization. The paper contains the results of virtual reconstruction of the urban landscape of the Bely Gorod (White City) of the 17th - 18th centuries. It is historical area in the center of Moscow, near Kremlin. Given the multidisciplinary nature of such a project, its team should include specialists from different fields: history, archaeology, geography, as well as architects, restorers, IT specialists (with experience in 3D, VR and GIS technologies). Such a team was assembled for the implementation of this project. Digital technologies are used in our project not only for reconstruction but to create immersive VR effects for user in the recreated virtual environment as well. Valid reconstruction should be carried out on the basis of a set of reliable historical sources (archaeological, geological, archival - pictorial, graphic, textual, etc.), characterizing the spatial changes in the territory of the Bely Gorod over three centuries. The following tasks were solved in our research: • creation of a database on the city estates and buildings located on the territory of Bely Gorod; • creation of a virtual reconstruction of the relief of the studied territory of the Bely Gorod; • creation of 3D-models of the dominant historical buildings located on the Bely Gorod relief (Ivanovsky Monastery, temples, chambers, buildings of the city estates); • placement (gridding) of objects’ 3D-models on the reconstructed relief; • placement of the historical parceling of the Bely Gorod on the recreated relief; • adjustment of the reconstructed landscape to use VR technologies to "immerse" the user in the virtual environment of the Bely Gorod. The solution of the set tasks required the use of a number of digital technologies. We consider how these technologies were used and what results of creating virtual reconstructions of the historical landscape and urban development of the Bely Gorod were obtained. The paper contains a lot of visualisations of virtual reconstruction results.