VR Tour of the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg

The former Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg are a reminder of the darkest times in German history. Nazi buildings such as the Congress Hall or the Zeppelin Grandstand remain as ruins from the Nazi era.

The Nuremberg-based start-up Blickwinkel Tour now offers bus tours of the site and uses modern technology to show what the Nazi Party Rally Grounds looked like back then, or what they were supposed to look like. A tour of the grounds takes about 90 minutes. Participants receive information and historical background from professional guides who lead the tour.

On the VR glasses, the participants receive information, pictures, videos and 3D/360-degree views of the old Nazi buildings again and again during the tour. The animations are based on old plans, sketches and records.

"Regardless of the imagination of the participants, with the help of the guide and our hardware and software system, they can uniformly immerse themselves in a world that is not accessible in this way. We manage to visualise the accessibility of education and knowledge in a contemporary way and convey it accordingly," says Art Petto, founder of Blickwinkel Tour, who created the VR Tour together with his business partner.

The Nuremberg Congress Hall: Ruin vs. magnificent building

The first stop is the inner courtyard of the Congress Hall. An animation appears on the VR glasses showing how the building was originally planned. Looking around in the virtual space, the boundaries between virtual reality and reality become blurred. This allows the participants to compare the two worlds with each other.

Zeppelin Grandstand: A dilapidated Nazi building

The next stop is the Zeppelin Field and the now very dilapidated Zeppelin Grandstand. The golden swastika was once emblazoned there, and its detonation by the Americans on 22 April 1945 is probably one of the most famous videos in the world. The participants are shown this video on their VR glasses before they see another animation of what the Zeppelin Grandstand looked like in the 1930s. To the left and right of the pulpit, where Adolf Hitler once spoke to the crowds, are two huge fire bowls. The Swiss tour group can see one of them for real during a short detour to the Golden Hall inside the Zeppelin Grandstand.

The German Stadium: Gigantism of the National Socialists

Finally, we go to another mammoth Nazi project that was ultimately never built: the German stadium was to have been built on the Grossen Straße, where the exhibition grounds are today. A planned capacity of 400,000 people shows the gigantism of the Nazis. But work never went beyond the building pit that is now the Silver Lake.

It is difficult to imagine the dimensions based only on facts and figures. "But when I stand virtually at a height of about 90 metres and look down where a football stadium fits in three or four times, that's something else," says Armin Glass, the tour guide.

Tour offer to be expanded

Currently offers Viewpoint Tour the VR bus tour mainly for groups. According to founder Art Petto, however, they now also want to offer more tours for individual participants. If demand is good, there could soon be regular tours that can be booked by individuals or smaller groups.

Source: br / blickwinkeltour