Enfilade

Thanks to David Pullins for sharing news of this collaborative project between Versailles and Google:

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Palace History Gallery at Versailles
Château de Versailles, opened 14 June 2012

What did Versailles look like before Louis XIV? How did the small hunting lodge of Louis XIII become the largest Palace in Europe? What embellishments did the young Sun King want in his Palace of festivities and amusements? Did you know that the Hall of Mirrors was originally a terrace overlooking the gardens?

The palace of Versailles is a unique place, a royal residence, a history museum and a Republican palace. The complexity of the site needs to be explained to the over 6 million visitors from all over the world who come to Versailles each year. The Palace of Versailles, in partnership with Google, opens the Palace History Gallery on 14 June 2012. As a prologue to the visit to the State Apartments, eleven rooms explain to visitors the richly varied functions of the places they are about to explore. The visit combines the presentation of the collections of Versailles with physical scale models and striking 3D reconstructions.

Google / Versailles Partnership

The technological programme rolled out to accompany the opening of the Palace History Gallery is the fruit of close collaboration over more than a year between the teams of the Palace and those of Google. An ambitious technological policy has been implemented in Versailles for several years now to back up its scientific and cultural communication, disseminate knowledge about it more widely and develop new links with the visitors and with new audiences. From the origin of the project, the exhibition curators decided on the role and the scope of the multimedia in each exhibition and online. The partnership with Google provided the opportunity for a more in-depth approach to the use of technologies to develop, enliven and make more incisive its scientific and cultural communication. 3D technology, in particular, is used extensively in different media (in the rooms, on the Internet, on mobile terminals). Google’s Cultural Institute develops technological solutions for viewing, hosting and digitising materials to favour the creative presentation, protection and promotion of culture online.

Thanks to its dedicated team of engineers, Google’s Cultural Institute has already collaborated with organisations in several countries on different projects, notably for putting online thousands of artworks in the framework of the Art Project, the digitisation of the archives of Nelson Mandela and the Dead Sea Manuscripts.