WDR | Cologne Cathedral 360°

Ever wanted to stand on the roof of Cologne Cathedral, explore areas that are normally closed to the public or experience the cathedral completely alone at night? With Cologne Cathedral 360°, WDR makes one of Germany’s most famous buildings digitally and immersively accessible. The browser-based WebXR Experience takes users to extraordinary locations inside and outside the cathedral and combines high-resolution 360° panoramas, video, sound, interactive content and a three-dimensional model of the building. Whether on desktop, smartphone or a Virtual Reality headset, users can freely explore the cathedral from perspectives that would be difficult or even impossible to experience during a regular visit.

The Experience is based on one of WDR’s early major Virtual Reality projects: “Cologne Cathedral in 360° and VR”, which received the Grimme Online Award in 2017. For the new version, the project was technically and visually remastered for modern browsers and current VR headsets and expanded with new content and perspectives. The result transforms an award-winning VR project into a modern, platform-independent Web Experience – accessible directly in the browser without the need to install an app.

At the heart of the Experience is an interactive 3D model of Cologne Cathedral. Users can view the building from different angles, rotate it and explore it from a bird’s-eye perspective. Switching between day and night turns the model into an experience of its own. After dark, the cathedral’s exterior lighting highlights its architecture in a completely different way. The three-dimensional building also connects the different parts of the Experience, turning the navigation itself into a virtual journey of discovery.

The virtual tour does not stop at the publicly accessible nave. Users can explore the cathedral roof, the triforium, the organ, the stonemasons’ workshop and hidden corners of the World Heritage Site. Highlights include the Gero Cross, the Lochner Altarpiece, the Shrine of the Three Kings and the clock attic – as well as the Queen of Sheba and even a unicorn. New 360° panoramas also provide spectacular perspectives from the crossing tower and the cathedral’s western façade at night.

What did this place look like before today’s cathedral even existed? And how did the cathedral stand amid the devastated city after the Second World War? A virtual 360° journey through time allows users to explore the site of Cologne Cathedral across different historical periods – from antiquity and the Middle Ages to more recent history. Historical knowledge is therefore not only explained, but experienced spatially.

A building like Cologne Cathedral is defined not only by its architecture. Sound therefore plays an important role throughout the Experience. Users can experience the cathedral’s unique acoustics at different locations or attend a virtual private concert in the cathedral at night. The Cologne Cathedral vocal ensemble can be experienced in an immersive 360° environment – a concert with panoramic views in which the virtual visitor appears to have the entire cathedral to themselves.

Cologne Cathedral 360° demonstrates how culture, history and architecture can be communicated through digital technologies without attempting to replace the real-world experience. 360° photography, 3D, Virtual Reality, sound and interactive knowledge transfer merge into an Experience that is easily accessible through a web browser while offering a fully immersive experience when viewed with a VR headset. Cologne Cathedral can therefore be explored regardless of location, device or physical accessibility.