Museums in the metaverse: How Web3 technology can help historical sites

Metaverse events at ancient and historic sites could soon become an alternate future for tourism.

Owners of physical villas and castles who have drawn up augmented reality floor plans of their properties believe their ambitious plans to attract visitors to the metaverse will work, as virtual events can help them pay high maintenance bills for their aging properties and also they offer the opportunity to change historical narratives.

The metaverse tourism model was accelerated by the downturns in tourism triggered by COVID-19, but the industry may already have headed down that path.

Currently, the major metaverse platforms are clunky, difficult to use, and awaiting further "real estate" development, but companies are concentrating on what could be. Brands seem to be entering the metaverse en masse just for PR bragging rights.

So it seems that the possibility of learning existing, new and revised stories through the metaverse is not that remote.

Non-expendable castles, villas and palaces

Michelle Choi, founder of 3.O Labs, a Web3 venture lab, turned to digital opportunities to finance the maintenance of physical paintings, such as the sale of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, as a fundraiser to preserve illiquid assets.

Choi was a product manager at Google when he noticed the drop in museum tourism due to COVID-19 and saw it as an opportunity for future metaverses. He subsequently quit his job and began his own metaverse experiments.

He began by working with a team to launch Non-Fungible Castle, an NFT exhibition and auction at Lobkowicz Palace, a real-life castle in Prague, which took place in October 2021. At the event, NFTs were exhibited alongside 500-year-old paintings and objects. had the goal to “expand accessibility to cultural heritage”.

The launch high enough to cover the restoration of all urgent projects on the property. Motivated by this proof of concept, Choi and 3.O Labs are now busy curating metaverse touring experiences globally.

With the broader mission of making Web3 accessible to all users, 3.O Labs is already incubating a number of Web3 projects ranging from NFTs to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs. Within its vertical metaverse, the risk lab is already building a castle project in Germany, to be followed by a villa in India, and then possibly a museum in Ghana.

Choi told Cointelegraph about his long-term vision for metaverse travel:

“Trips will be promoted as a teaching tool. In the past, tourism meant visiting a place. The photos were in 2D, but then 3D trips with virtual headsets emerged. Experimentation in 4D time is now possible. Now, we can combine different time periods. There is a teaching angle.”

This raises a number of questions regarding what new stories will be created in the metaverse.

Will history be rewritten in the metaverse?

For better or worse, tourism companies, educational platforms and museums could reinvent history in the metaverse.

Priyadarshini Raje Scindia's family owns the Jai Vilas Palace, a 200-year-old palace turned museum in Madhya Pradesh, India. She is planning a collection of NFTs produced by local artists to fund a metaverse experience. COVID-19 closed its museum for two years, allowing time for some necessary but expensive restoration work.

Scindia told Cointelegraph that NFTs should be embraced as art as “Every generation has its art and its interpretation. This is a new medium and a new platform for hungry emerging Indian artists.” He added that “there should be no barriers around to the creation of art.

Scindia is convinced that the metaverse is the future, since "a person usually visits a museum once", but can visit it multiple times in the metaverse. She says that in India, especially, museums are not the first destination people think of going for entertainment. Private museums in small towns can be taken for granted, especially when compared to shopping malls and movie theaters. Therefore, she is working with 3.O Labs to "create immersive experiences, for example animations that allow you to put yourself in short story documentaries." It's about opening more doors for conversations and education.

Scindia also has a story to tell the world throughout the metaverse:

“I do not agree with my family history. We have research document rooms in the palace. Now is the right time and the right platform to correct history."

She told Cointelegraph that the historical narrative she would like to paint with her immersive experiences is “to tell the true story of my clan, the Maharatas. Retelling the story told by the British, which sounds like a Game of Thrones book: dark and barbaric. We fought for independence from all outside forces, but it was made out that we were fighting Indians in India. It is a historical fact that the Maharatas were the rulers of India, after the Mughals. And its narrative and value system are even more essential to study and understand today. I would like to use the platform to change the narrative through art, culture and history.”

“I disagree with the way Maratha history is portrayed. However, today there is a renewed interest, perhaps because of the glamor of cinema, but there is also a new world out there. People have a deep interest in history today and are rediscovering art and history. The metaverse can be the right platform to inform and educate people, to generate interest, so they can start their own deep dive journey into history, art and culture through this amazing world.”

DAO for castles, villas and palace restorations

Prince Heinrich Donatus of the Schaumburg-Lippe family owns Bueckeburg Castle, a castle in northern Germany, 45 minutes from Hannover. Schaumburg-Lippe was one of the 16 ruling families of the German Empire until 1918. The castle was subsequently confiscated by the British Army of the Rhine to use as its headquarters from 1948 to 1953. It had previously been under American control after the end of the world. World War II in 1945 until the German occupation zones were established.

A bullet hole in the latrine serves as a reminder of the castle's recent history. The Americans were the first to arrive in Bueckeburg during the war, and their tank shell that penetrated the dome can still be seen in the castle museum. The family exhibits the shell and has left the hole in the roof as a souvenir of the war.

Donatus has the same idea as Scindia: a metaverse for historical preservation.

Donatus, who co-founded 3.O Labs with Choi, will soon operate an NFT exhibit and DAO-focused hacker house in the castle. He told Cointelegraph that “The metaverse is not a virtual reality world. It is a new economy. For example, the incentive to enter the metaverse might be to protect a castle."

But why support noble families in 2022?

For illiquid assets like sprawling properties, the cost of carrying them can exceed a family's cash flow. Preservation of privately owned historically significant sites is therefore a major challenge for owners and a national or global public good.

In 2001, Donatus's grandfather sold a castle for €1, and the new owner's last two attempts to sell the same castle for €1 failed to find a buyer. Donate added:

"Foreigners buying European castles give up after a year when they realize what it's all about."

"Bueckeburg Castle is no longer meant to be inhabited, it's primarily a cultural site," Donatus said, "We have a sole responsibility to maintain this history by working with limited resources, and suddenly the resources can be greatly enhanced and collectively sourced." . .”

“Virtual tours could be profitable, though metaverse ideas could take several years to catch on,” Choi noted. “But in the long run, there are no maintenance or air conditioning expenses for the metaverse.”

Donatus said he envisions launching a DAO treasury for renovations, akin to a "people's UNESCO," a reference to the United Nations agency tasked with protecting sites of cultural and historical significance.

DAOs are not limited by borders, and this can create network effects for new tourism models. "A kind of PleasrDAO for castles," said Donatus. “They will include decentralized access/administration to castles and castle hackathons, as castles are a great place for gatherings.”

Augmented 4D Metaverse Events

Storytelling and historical experiences can also be augmented to create surreal and impossible scenarios.

"Under no circumstances do I want to experience things that I can experience in the real world," Donatus said. "The Metaverse can recreate and preserve the past." He said one could create a "tennis match in a ballroom at the Palace of Versailles as a major tourist attraction."

Choi said, "In the metaverse, we can carry weapons and re-enact wars for historical teaching purposes." Historical re-enactments with reconstructed weapons occur all over the world, including in the United States, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Italy, and there may be many future teachable moments in the metaverse.

If metaverses really are the future, planning for their rules and composition starts now. That is why, for example, a group of indigenous Australians plans to set up an embassy in the metaverse. Mixing old and new is seemingly tenuous, but it all depends on how optimistic one is about the meaning of cultural totems in the metaverses of the future.

As metaverses become new models for tourism, they may also rewrite history in the process.