Feel it for Yourself: HistoryCity, Hidden Trento and the Immersive Exploration of the Past
by Vivien Baumert
Historians have long recognized the gap between historical research and the general public. The fact that very little of what we do as historians reaches the people is (or should be) of great concern. Indeed, there is an ongoing debate about how history can be made more approachable, understandable, and – most importantly – fun. Public history projects, such as this blog, aim to present history in an accessible and engaging way through various approaches, creating unique experiences for a broader audience through films and documentaries, podcasts, interviews, games, and more. Smartphones, in particular, as a source of constant availability and connectivity, may very well be one of the most promising tools for communicating history. In this article, we will take a closer look at the project HistoryCity and its app-roach to making history public.
About HistoryCity
HistoryCity is an initiative set in a European framework, namely within the project Public Renaissance (PURE), funded by another intriguing acronym, HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area). One of PURE’s primary goals is to explore and contextualise public spaces and urban cultures by examining a city’s historical materiality – which, in many cases, remains visible today. To share its findings with the public, the project has developed a series of free apps. These apps, typically named Hidden [City], invite users to explore one of the ten currently participating European cities through the eyes of generally fictional yet research-based characters. They are designed to provide “an insight into the experience of real people, their thoughts, concerns, hopes and fears as they navigated life in their cities.”
With its developmental headquarters at the University of Exeter under the direction of Prof. Fabrizio Nevola and Dr. David Rosenthal, the project’s research collaborations are fundamentally transnational, with research hubs in six European countries: the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, the UK, and Italy. Appropriately, the apps are multilingual, with English as a constant, complemented by each respective city’s dominant language(s). Once downloaded, users can choose from a variety of “free immersive trails” of different lengths to explore the historical everyday life of their selected city. These trails can be experienced either in person, with GPS-triggered assistance, or comfortably from home. On a recent trip to Italy, I had the opportunity to test one of the apps – Hidden Trento – and took myself on my own private tour through early modern Trento.1
About Hidden Trento

Among historians, Trento, located in the northernmost Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige, is primarily known for the so-called Council of Trento (1545–1563), the landmark gathering of the Catholic Church to decide on responses to the Reformation. Furthermore, the city’s history revolves around its conception as a frontier city, serving as a pivotal border and transit area between the northern and southern Alpine regions. Both of these aspects are woven into the immersive tours offered by Hidden Trento.
Currently, the app features four trails, two longer and two shorter, all accessible in Italian, English, or German. In line with the concept of HistoryCity, each tour is led by a fictional, research-inspired citizen of Trento, all of whom have individual backstories, opinions, experiences, and responsibilities. Users are introduced to their chosen tour guide in a setting that is supposed to depict everyday life and are then invited to follow them around the city as they go about their business, all the while exploring some of Trento’s lesser-known places. At each checkpoint, a GPS-triggered one-to-two-minute audio clip provides insights into the historical setting. Users can then opt to “discover more” and listen to additional short recordings featuring expert commentaries. A link at the top right of the app gives access to complementary texts with additional images of historical documents and artefacts from the city’s museum collections. The app’s “About” section offers some extra reading material about the characters and the periods their stories reflect. As of now, the Hidden Trento app focuses on the early modern age, addressing themes such as the Council of Trento, the plague epidemic of 1658, migrant perspectives, and the history of the prince-bishops. However, a new tour currently in development will explore Trento’s history under fascist rule, promising a very different perspective on the city’s past and its modern-day appearance.

‘Thumbs up’ for HistoryCity and Hidden Trento
As a public history project, the different research teams behind HistoryCity take great care to communicate with interested groups and collaborators. During my time in Trento, I was lucky enough to observe the intense thought process that shapes both the theoretical and practical aspects of Hidden Trento’s content: Are the terms and phrasings understandable or unnecessarily technical? Does the route make sense to the user? Should the GPS trigger be moved further down the road? Considering the app’s trilingual design, the reasonable audio lengths, the visual materials, and practical features like the “discover more” option and GPS integration, HistoryCity has successfully created an accessible tool for discovering seemingly familiar spaces from a new and different angle – or rather, from a different time. Remarkably, they achieve this without relying on dense academic jargon or lengthy, complex explanations that tend to overwhelm even the most experienced historians.
HistoryCity’s apps are dynamic, continually refined, and enriched with new stories and ideas. This means that a few minor inconsistencies are to be expected – for example, the rather sensitive GPS feature. Still, some of these inconsistencies can be quite amusing: having the English voice of a 17th-century Italian plague worker lead you through the city in somewhat of an American accent is certainly an interesting experience. But even from home, without physically experiencing the city, apps like Hidden Trento offer a refreshingly unique way to bridge the gap between historical research and the public and serve as an inspiration for other public history projects, integrating history into users’ everyday lives.

Vivien Baumert is a student of History at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. This article resulted from an internship at the Italian-German Historical Institute (ISIG) in Trento, which is one of the project’s collaborators.
- About. What is HistoryCity?, in: HistoryCity Apps, https://historycityapps.org/about/ [accessed: 21/11/2024]. ↩︎
OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Vivien Baumert (6. Dezember 2024). Feel it for Yourself: HistoryCity, Hidden Trento and the Immersive Exploration of the Past. HISTORY GOES PUBLIC. Abgerufen am 11. Juni 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/12v2m
