BAGAN is an experiment within OPEN HERITAGE, the online project by the Google Cultural Institute made in collaboration with CYARK in order to document and share global heritage sites at risk. It documents what the temples looked like before being damaged by the earthquake that devastated the region in 2016.

Created with 3D scanning, photogrammetry, and 360 video, the project stands as the vanguard of virtual tours.

Users can explore three temples among the over 3,000 Buddhist monuments scattered in the 26 square mile plain of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Bagan, Myanmar. During the 3D virtual tour, visitors are guided step by step by the voice of a narrator who shares contextual and historical information about the damaged temples.

The 3D models take form from a monochrome map of the environment surrounding the temples, made up of just thousands of little brown dots to draw the surfaces of land, vegetation, roads and other constructions captured by lidar scans. This visual solution helps to spatially contextualise the temples without interfering with their architectures, so that users can concentrate solely on the buildings while always referring to the space in which they take place. 

By clicking on the icons standing in front of particular parts of the temples, one can access to supplementary information in the form of audio guides, documentary videos, or additional textual/visual contributions.