【Western Archives】

It's all in the details.

The Western ArchivesSistine Chapel can now be viewed from a whole new perspective, thanks to a digital photo project that has captured every minute detail of the building.

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270,000 photographs were taken during the five-year project, capturing everything from Michaelangelo's frescoes to the building's mosaic floor.

Credit: Getty Images

Photographers used a 10-metre-high portable scaffold and special telescopic lens in order to capture the images (which are not pictured). The photos are now stored in a Vatican server holding 30 terabytes of information.

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VATICAN CITY, VATICAN - MARCH 09: Workers set up the Sistine Chapel for the papal conclave on March 9, 2013 in Vatican City, Vatican. Cardinals are set to enter the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI after he became the first pope in 600 years to resign from the role. The conclave is scheduled to start on March 12 inside the Sistine Chapel and will be attended by 115 cardinals as they vote to select the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church. (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images) Credit: Getty Images

The photos have also been made into a new three-volume, 870-page set that is limited to 1,999 copies and marketed to libraries and collectors.

The set, which costs around $12,700, is a joint production of the Vatican Museum and Italy's Scripta Maneant, an art publisher.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by AGF s.r.l./REX/Shutterstock (4229860d) New LED lighting in the Sistine Chapel New LED lighting of Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum, Rome, Italy - 29 Oct 2014 Credit: AGF s.r.l./REX/Shutterstock

"In the future, this will allow us to know the state of every centimeter of the chapel as it is today, in 2017," Antonio Paolucci, former head of the Vatican museums told Reuters.

The last time all the Sistine frescoes were photographed was between 1980 and 1994, during a restoration project that saw them cleaned for the first time in centuries.

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