Can you imagine touring the palatial rooms alone?
The Palace of Versailles is one of those monuments that deserves a trip, and the queues that are necessary. Its extraordinary state of preservation, moreover, makes it very easy to fully immerse yourself in the golden age of the French kingdom just by setting foot on the threshold. Although for this, yes, you will have to be able to erase from the scene the thousands of people who visit it daily , totaling nearly eight million each year.
Now, however, you can explore this French emblem completely alone, and without leaving your home, thanks to the project Versailles: the palace is yours , from Google Arts & Culture . It recreates in virtual reality 36,000 square meters of the royal residence, that is, 24 ostentatious rooms -which are not always open for visits- and the enormous and lavish gardens, reproduced in absolute detail. In addition, you can stop at any landmark (works of art, architectural elements, etc.) and the platform will give you interesting data and anecdotes about the stately mansion.
How come you don't have virtual reality glasses? It is not a problem! Only with your browser you can explore rooms as extraordinary as the bedroom of the king and queen, the royal opera or the hall of mirrors.
In addition, Google Arts & Culture has also prepared a journey through the history of the palace, with secrets and curiosities of the place, like the mirror masters who shaped the famous gallery were "stolen" from Venice, which threatened artisans who left its borders with the death penalty.
Or that palace scientists dissected numerous animals, giving rise to research activities that culminated years later with the creation of veterinary schools. The Palace also set the precedent for zoos with its Royal Menagerie with species from all over the world!
The website also allows you to discover the delicacies that were served in the castle or find out how the fashion of 1780 influenced the clothes we wear today . It also has tests of the type "Which member of royalty would you be?", and details quite unknown stories, such as that of the android, that is, the mechanical model, presented by Queen Marie Antoinette in 1785.
HOW IT WAS MADE?
To bring Versailles to life virtually, more than 130,000 photos were taken with cameras and drones , which were used in a process called photogrammetry. It converts 2D images into 3D models of objects and places. With four terabytes of data, or what is the same, 15,000 textured pixels, the work became the largest photogrammetric capture in history. In the following video you can see how all the work was carried out: