“I always thought this was the perfect place for this,” says Dr. Marina Piranomonte, brandishing a headset that looks like it belongs to a member of Daft Punk. “This is one of the most cannibalized sites in Rome. So when you’re taking people around, you have to do this tiresome explanation of, ‘What was here is now in Naples; this part is in Pisa. And people don’t understand—it’s just too much for them to grasp.”

Piranomonte is the curator of the Baths of Caracalla, the 100,000-square meter complex built by the third-century emperor, which lies beyond the Circus Maximus. Just off the main tourist map of Rome, it’s rarely visited; and although details like mosaic flooring, fragments of decoration, and a board game chiseled into the pool deck remain, there’s little to see here—compared to the more famous sites, at least—other than the extraordinary hulking brick shell of the complex.

So when Piranomonte really wanted to increase visitor numbers, she knew where she would start.

Last month, the curator and her team debuted a virtual reality tour of the baths. Instead of the standard audio guide, the headsets—which conceal a tablet—recreate what things looked like in Caracalla’s prime, when 6,000 guests at a time would pile into the baths. Select the room you’re in and you’re immediately transported into a world of painted walls, lush mosaic floors, and hulking sculptures which have long since been removed. The headsets are intuitive, so as you move your head, the set moves with you, allowing a 360-degree view of the rooms as they were.

The Caracalla project is the latest high-tech addition to the ancient Rome scene, but far from the first. In fact, many of the city’s most popular sites are now using technology to recreate the past.

Last year, the Ara Pacis—the cube-like sculpted altar, built to commemorate Emperor Augustus’ military victories—debuted “L’Ara Com’Era”, or “The Altar as It Was.” On weekend evenings, when the tourists leave, those in the know queue up for Samsung GearVR headsets that deliver a 3D presentation of how the site originally looked (deep in the countryside, as opposed to smack in the city as it is today) and then fill in each section of the altar in real time, giving you a frieze-by-frieze idea of missing sections, as well as the vibrant colors that were once on show. The project was only supposed to last a year, but thanks to its popularity—lines out of the door, even on winter nights—it’s now running every Friday and Saturday night until October 2019.