LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Historic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris reopens to the public this weekend, five years after a fire gutted much of it. If you can't make it over there, an augmented reality exhibit at St. John the Divine in New York lets visitors step inside its history. NPR's Jennifer Vanasco tried it out.
JENNIFER VANASCO, BYLINE: Notre Dame itself is an example of very old, if advanced, technology. Think flying buttresses, which hold up the roof. But the exhibit uses very new technology - augmented reality - to explore the church's history. Visitors are handed a tablet computer.
ASIA LAIRD: We call this the HistoPad.
VANASCO: Histo - short for history, of course. This is Asia Laird. She's the managing director of Histovery, which created the exhibit.
LAIRD: They come to a time portal.
VANASCO: You scan the code.
LAIRD: And that takes them back to a specific moment or place. Here, we're going back to 1160.
(SOUNDBITE OF CREAKING)
LAIRD: These are the first stones of the cathedral being laid.
VANASCO: The tablet becomes like a window that looks into the past.
LAIRD: We can compare 1160, this exact spot where we're standing, looking at a group of people.
(SOUNDBITE OF MASONS WORKING)
LAIRD: And we're going to use this slider, and we look at September 2021.
(SOUNDBITE OF METAL CLANGING)
LAIRD: This is now two years after the fire, and they are in full reconstruction.
VANASCO: Laird turns in a circle. And in the tablet, you can now see around you people working on the restoration, which took five years in about $740 million.
LAIRD: People couldn't visit Notre Dame. So we took Notre Dame to the world.
VANASCO: The exhibit has been in Tokyo, Mexico City, Washington, D.C.
EDOUARD LUSSAN: We tried to present the cathedral not like in schoolbooks, but for the masses, and especially the younger audience.
VANASCO: Edouard Lussan is the co-founder of Histovery, and he designed the exhibit. He says the fire showed France how much people around the globe look to Notre Dame as a vital part of everyone's culture.
LUSSAN: When the cathedral burned, it was a real disaster that moved not only the French but, I guess, the world.
VANASCO: Even though Notre Dame is now reopening, Histovery hopes the exhibit will continue to travel for everyone who cares about the cathedral but can't make it to Paris.
Jennifer Vanasco, NPR News, New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHURCH BELLS TOLLING) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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