#Romanovs100 in AR: Royal family returns to St. Petersburg aboard an Augmented Reality app

Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II, and his son Alexei have been brought back home to Tsarskoye Selo and St. Petersburg – thanks to the AR mobile app the project #Romanovs100 created to commemorate the murdered family.

RT’s team traveled to the town of Pushkin, as Tsarskoye Selo is now called, to see the Alexander Palace and Park, where Russia’s last royal family lived, worked, walked, paddled their kayaks, rode horses and built snow-towers in winter – away from the razzle-dazzle of the then-capital St. Petersburg.

While the award-winning project #Romanovs100, which marked 100 years since the murder of Nicholas II, his wife and five children by the Bolsheviks, was initially designed to run on social media for 100 days, it culminated in the creation of a real photo album, with the best images summing up the family life of Russia’s last monarchs.

Augmented Reality was used to bring this experience closer to today’s readers. This is how the photo album became a framework for explainer videos, photo galleries, 3D objects and music specifically written for the project – things usually not associated with print.

Perhaps the most interesting AR objects in the collection are 3D figures of Nicholas II and his son Alexei riding a bicycle. Alexei desperately wanted a bicycle, but he could not be allowed it as his parents feared he could fall off or get injured. Alexei suffered from hemophilia. His blood did not clot properly and any injury could have become a fatal one. In our model you can see that he finally got a three-wheeled bicycle, designed specially for him, to avoid any chance of a fall.

The “homecoming” shots were made in Alexandrovsky Park (the Alexander Palace is under reconstruction until 2020) and near the neighboring Catherine Palace.

In St. Petersburg, the Romanovs' royal yacht “anchored” near the Winter Palace, which was fired at by the Aurora cruiser during the 1917 revolution. While Nicholas II himself appears near the magnificent Kazansky Cathedral, next to the Bronze Horseman (a monument to Peter I, who established close ties with Europe and westernized his country), Church of the Savior on Blood (erected on the place where Alexander II, the grandfather of the last tsar, was fatally wounded by revolutionary extremists in 1881) and at other iconic spots.

The iOS app, which can be downloaded HERE, works both with the book and by itself. You can place the AR-stand anywhere with a flat surface and enough light, to immerse yourself in the Romanov world.

The photo album is available for free download HERE. You can also request a hard copy for your classroom or research.

#Romanovs100 reviewed the last decades of the Russian Empire, running into the 1917 revolution, which did away with monarchy and eventually installed the Bolsheviks as the ruling power. The project used thousands of snaps made by the last royal family with their private cameras, to show the Romanovs from a more human, personal angle.

#Romanovs100 already boasts over 20 accolades including Clio Entertainment, Shorty and ADC’s Merit awards. The AR Family Photo Album has also been shortlisted for D&AD 2019, one of the world’s most prestigious design awards, which has been running since 1962.

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