La Seu Vella
We reconstruct the splendour of the Seu Vella of Lleida in Virtual Reality to relive its lost heritage.
XR Headsets
Tourism and culture
The Paeria de Lleida and the Consorci del Turó de la Seu Vella join forces to revolutionise the communication of heritage.
A commitment to immersive technology to recreate the medieval splendour of the cathedral, allowing tourists and new generations to see and understand an artistic legacy that had physically disappeared.
THE NEED
Making the invisible visible
The client faced a significant heritage and outreach challenge: how to explain, and make visible to visitors, the original splendour of a monument that has lost its interior decoration?
- Imagination deficit: for the modern visitor (and especially for the youngest), it is very hard to walk into an empty stone cathedral and imagine that five centuries ago it was completely painted and full of works of art.
- Evolution of the format: initially, the idea of a traditional video mapping projection on the walls was considered. However, they needed something deeper, more immersive and independent of the building's lighting conditions.
- Tourist and educational attraction: they needed an appealing tool to boost tourism and bring local history closer to teenagers and students in a way that connected with their digital habits.
THE SOLUTION
Our technological contribution
At INVELON we proposed replacing the idea of a projection, which is tied to the space and the remains that still exist, with an immersive journey through time using Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR).
- The technological contribution: it makes it possible to digitally reconstruct lost heritage without touching, altering or damaging a single stone of the real monument. It adds the ability to "teleport" the user, visually and aurally, to the 15th and 16th centuries.
- Historical rigour: the technology does not provide only a "visual spectacle", but serves as a canvas for scientific outreach. Everything recreated digitally (colours, architecture, tapestries) has been scientifically validated by the Càtedra del Turó de la Seu Vella of the Universitat de Lleida (UdL) and the Museu de Lleida.
THE RESULT
From stone to medieval splendour
The result is a guided, immersive experience lasting 7 minutes (in its pilot phase) installed within the monumental complex itself (initially in the Sala de la Canonja).
- Immersive group visits: stations have been set up for groups of 10 people at the same time.
- An unforgettable tour of the key spaces of the Seu: the main altar, the transept, the choir, the stained-glass windows and the cloister, witnessing the magical transition between the current state of the stone and the vibrant medieval/Renaissance cathedral.
- Tailor-made design: the content has been designed to be scalable, with script adaptations for the general public, children and academic audiences.
THE BENEFIT
An improvement in heritage management
More than a tourist attraction, it is a cross-cutting, high-value-added tool for the city, with significant cultural, tourism, educational and accessibility benefits. Some of the main ones are:
- Tourism innovation: it positions Lleida and the Seu Vella at the forefront of European heritage tourism, offering a premium experience that attracts new visitor profiles.
- Historical understanding: it solves the problem of abstraction. Seeing heritage reconstructed at 1:1 scale in the first person creates an emotional and educational impact that a text panel cannot match.
- Accessibility and inclusion: the project is multilingual from the start (Catalan, with upcoming integrations in Spanish, English and French), which facilitates the internationalisation of the monument.
- Preserving memory: it acts as an immersive digital archive of the knowledge accumulated by historians and archaeologists over decades.