Notre-Dame de Paris: The Augmented Exhibition Hosted by the Historic New Orleans Collection

For nearly four years, Notre-Dame Cathedral – arguably the most famous church in the world – has been closed to visitors, following the fire on April 15, 2019 that nearly collapsed the 850-year-old building. Repairs to the cathedral are underway, and it is expected to reopen partially in 2024, but in the Fall of 2022 through the Spring of 2023 the Historic New Orleans Collection hosted 360-degree augmented reality exhibition that took visitors inside the landmark. In Notre-Dame de Paris: The Augmented Exhibition, visitors could navigate the cathedral through the ages by using a HistoPad, an augmented reality touchscreen tablet developed by the French technology firm Histovery in collaboration with both public and private institutions. Using the handheld HistoPad, visitors were able "observe" key moments in the buildings history in augmented reality, from the builders laying the first stones in the Middle Ages and the coronation of Emperor Napoleon I in 1804 to the Paris Fire Brigade battle of the 2019 blaze and the current workers reconstructing the building.

This exhibit has been amongst the most popular exhibits The Historic New Orleans Collection has ever done, with tickets being sold out for almost the entire run of the show, including extending the closing by two weeks. Apart from explaining the exhibition and thinking about the use of augmented reality in a museum and public history context, this paper will reflect on why this medieval cathedral has been such a draw for an audience in New Orleans, and discuss some of the factors that make the Middle Ages appealing to a contemporary North American audience.