The Notre Dame Cathedral special exhibition currently being held at the Seoul National Palace Museum (Choi Si-young/Korea Herald)
An exhibition exploring highlights of the history of Notre Dame Cathedral, which reopens in December after a fire in April 2019, will run until Sept. 1 at the National Palace Museum in Seoul.
Titled “Notre-Dame de Paris Augmented Reality: 850 years of history and resilience at your fingertips,” the exhibit offers an immersive and interactive experience, explained Bruno de Sa Moreira, CEO and co-founder of Histobury, a French startup specializing in augmented reality, which launched the traveling exhibit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in November 2019, seven months after a fire destroyed the limestone landmark’s attic, roof and spire.
“This project is to share with you the complete history of Notre Dame from its beginnings,” de Sa Moreira said Monday during a pre-opening tour of the National Museum of Art in Seoul, the museum’s 13th destination in the world and second in Asia after Shanghai.
“We will travel through 900 years of history, stopping at key moments where we can meet the protagonists of the story,” he added, referring to the medieval Paris cathedral, whose construction project began in 1160. Notre-Dame, which means “our lady” or Virgin Mary in French, took almost three centuries to complete.
Visitors will be provided with ‘Histpad’ tablets, complete with photographs and graphic commentary, which allow them to look back on key moments in the cathedral’s history, including the day of the fire in April and the subsequent recovery work.
The 860-year-old cathedral is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the special exhibition aims to reconsider the meaning of this heritage and how it can be preserved, according to Jeong Yeong-jae, director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art.
