Saint-Lô, 80 years after D-Day

In the summer of 1944, Saint-Lô was 95% destroyed by the bombings of the Liberation, earning it the name "capital of ruins". Eighty years later, the memory of the former city survived only in archives and in the recollections of the last witnesses. For the 80th anniversary of D-Day, we were asked to bring it back to life.

In spring 2024, in a few weeks of production, our teams reconstructed pre-war Saint-Lô from period photographs and documents, turning it into a virtual-reality experience delivered on headsets, with up to twenty visitors at a time.

On 5 June 2024, the experience was at the heart of the national tribute to the civilian victims of the Liberation, presided over by the President of the French Republic at the Saint-Lô national stud farm, before some 3,500 people. In the stud farm’s stables, visitors of all ages walked the streets of the vanished city again: 1,111 time journeys in a single afternoon.

Given the turnout, the experience continued in the streets of Saint-Lô until 18 June 2024, meeting residents right where the former city disappeared.