High-tech Museum of The Bible to Open Its Doors on Friday

The much-hyped, state-of-the-art Museum of the Bible in Washington DC will begin welcoming visitors through its towering bronze gates on Friday.

Located three blocks from the Capitol building, the museum takes up a 430,000-square-foot space, which guests will enter through the 40-foot-tall Gutenberg Gates, bearing the first words of Genesis from the Gutenberg Bible.

As part of the build-up to the museum's opening, exact replicas of those gates have been displayed in five US cities, ending at the National Mall in DC last week.

The scale of the welcoming gates reflects some of the size and scope of what's inside: over eight floors, the museum will feature expansive exhibit and gallery space, a restaurant, a "biblical garden" and a performing arts theater -- offering an amount of content that would take "many days to view," according to the museum.

While the subject is surely of great interest to many, what makes this one of most hotly awaited museum openings of the year is the museum's focus on cutting-edge technology. Highlights include a customizable, tablet-based digital tour, 3D interaction with the biblical artifacts pictured in an elaboratedly illustrated prayer book, and a virtual reality trip through scenes from the Old Testament.

Highlights from the museum's collection include Dead Sea Scroll fragments, Torah scrolls, illuminated and Medieval manuscripts and first editions of a number of Bibles.

Inaugurating the museum's on-site theater will be the musical "Amazing Grace," which ran on Broadway in 2015.

Like many other Washington DC museums, admission to the Museum of the Bible will be free of charge, although timed reservations must be made in advance.