The Louvre has teamed up with Snap’s Paris AR Studio on a free smartphone-based AR experience called The Incredible Unknowns of the Louvre. Visitors scan a QR code on the label of six selected works, which launches Snapchat and overlays reconstructions, animations, and explainers that surface details time (and museum lighting) tends to hide—like original colors, materials, and technique. It’s the next step after a 2023 Ancient Egypt pilot, but this round spreads AR across multiple departments to shine a spotlight on pieces that don’t always get Mona Lisa-level attention.
The lineup is essentially a six-stop “how it was made (and what you’re missing)” tour: the Codex of Hammurabi gets an AR assist to help decode its cuneiform legal text; the Bust of Akhenaten is digitally restored toward its original form and color; and Holbein’s Portrait of Anne of Cleves is used to walk viewers through painting technique and hard-to-spot iconographic details. Elsewhere, the Kore of Samos regains its ancient polychromy in a simulated reconstruction, Desjardins’ Four Prisoners are placed back into their original monumental context, and Palissy’s Figurine Rustiche basin gets animated wildlife—snakes, lizards, turtles, frogs—because nothing says “Renaissance ceramics” like AR amphibians.
Snap’s Antoine Gilbert frames AR as a museum “mediation tool” that can restore “colors, gestures, techniques” while keeping scientific rigor, and the Louvre’s Gautier Verbeke positions it as a way to match contemporary digital habits without dumbing anything down. The distribution strategy is doing real work here: it’s designed for in-gallery scanning and remote access via Snapchat’s Lenses carousel or banners near the Louvre, plus extra depth on louvre.fr—meaning this isn’t just a one-and-done onsite gimmick, it’s a portable content layer for anyone in the area willing to download Snapchat.
Read more at Finestre sull’ Arte.