History comes alive at the El Venizelos Museum

Visitors have the opportunity to listen to one of Eleftherios Venizelos’ favorite songs, to see his pen “live” signing the Treaty of Sevres, but also to experience as an “eyewitness” two of the assassination attempts against the politician in Cretan finds Saturday at the Museum – House of Eleftherios Venizelos in Halepa.

The Museum opens its doors with free admission to the public in the context of International Museum Day and the action of the International Council of Museums 2024 entitled “Museums for Education and Research”, presenting for the first time a virtual reality (VR) application. , which comes to add Quick Response (QR) and Augmented Reality (AR) applications that are already in action.

These are the actions of the project “Digital monuments and documents for Eleftherios Venizelos” (ESPA 2014-2020) which brings the guided tour experience to life for the public, making the journey to the past, the time, the life and work of Eleftherios is even more exciting than Venizelos as a politician, diplomat, revolutionary, etc.”, explained Argyro Vatsakis, the deputy director of the “Eleftherios K. Venizelos” National Foundation, while he explained to us that through his mobile phone or tablet a visitor “scans. ” the QR codes located outside each room and next to most of the exhibits, which capture historical information. In fact, through this process he was given options for “short tour”, “bug- os tour”, “children’s tour” and “free”, in 4 languages ​​(Greek, English, French German).

In five things, the visitor is given the opportunity to discover them through the possibilities of augmented reality. So we watch Eleftherios Venizelos reading his newspaper, tapping his foot a little nervously, we hear his gramophone playing one of his favorite songs, we see his hand signing the treaty of Sèvres, but he also checked the holes from the bullets hiding in his car. in one of the assassination attempts he received.

However, the most impressive new acquisition of the House of Eleftherios Venizelos Museum is the virtual reality masks placed in the attic of the building that take the visitor to the assassination attempts that Venizelos received at the Lyon train station. in Paris in 1920 and Kifissias Avenue in Athens in 1933.

The use of masks took place on Saturday as a pilot for 3 hours, where by teaching many visitors were able to live in a cinematic way the experience of the dramatic events of 1920 and 1933. As explained by Mrs. Vatsaki, the application can be put into normal operation from the beginning of June.

“All this adds an experience to the tour of the museum. For example, in the room dedicated to the assassination attempt of ΄20, the visitor sees the bloody underwear of Venizelos and reads the surveillance material, then goes to the garage where the car that attacked and read the history of the exhibit and finally offered an additional experience today through virtual reality masks where it was brought to the test area”, said Ms. Vatsaki.

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