Versailles Gardens Transformed with Snapchat’s AR Dance Experience

• A new AR collaboration between Snapchat and the Palace of Versailles brings royal baroque dances to life on-site.
• Visitors can access four historical reconstructions through lenses embedded in the official Versailles mobile app.

Snapchat and the Palace of Versailles have launched “Dansez Versailles,” an interactive augmented reality experience set throughout the palace gardens. Designed to revive the festive spirit of Louis XIV’s court, the project uses mobile AR to reintroduce baroque dance traditions in their original outdoor settings.

The experience unfolds across four locations within the gardens, each highlighting a signature form of dance from the era. These include royal court ballets, masked balls, and theatrical performances, all viewable through Snapchat lenses tied to specific landmarks via the Versailles app.

This initiative repositions the gardens as dynamic cultural spaces, using technology to reconnect visitors with the social and artistic rituals that once defined life at Versailles. By engaging audiences through movement and history, it presents the past in a new, immersive format.

🌀 Tom’s Take:

Location-based augmented reality is a meaningful way to re-experience destinations from a different perspective time and time again. As one of AR's powers is time traveling, it especially pairs well with locations that are rich in culture and history. Snap and the Palace of Versailles demonstrate this perfectly with smartphone-based AR that enables visitors to experience the present of the Palace at the same time as giving them a window into the world of the past.

Source: Snap Inc.