It may not be Doc and Marty and their fabulous time machine, but almost! The city of Luxembourg this week unveiled a new mobile application that allows its users to travel back in time and discover the capital a hundred years ago.

It is an application based on augmented reality. No Pokémon to catch this time, but monuments from another era that come to life before your eyes. The “Luxembourg Time Traveler” mobile application was unveiled by the Mayor of the City, Lydie Polfer and its first alderman, Serge Wilmes, on Monday 16 May.

A great opportunity for residents and visitors to the capital to discover or rediscover the city. “The city center is full of streets, buildings and monuments that have a story to tell. Not only do users have a wealth of information at their fingertips, but they can also visualize the businesses of the capital from the Belle Époque to today,” underlines Serge Wilmes with enthusiasm.

In concrete terms, how does that work ? Thanks to geolocation, the application recognizes that the user is near one of the 31 points of interest and can, if necessary, guide him to position himself correctly. Once one of these points of interest is in the field of the camera, the application superimposes the historical image on the real image.

The user can then change the opacity of the image overlay. For all 31 points of interest, he has the possibility of finding out about the places thanks to texts, of using the “before/after” function which allows, thanks to a ruler, to go from one image to another, take a quiz or view photos from the archives of the Photothèque de la Ville de Luxembourg.

A great way to travel back in time and discover the capital from the turn of the 20th century, a time when the city’s economic and commercial development was in full swing and when small craft-related trade was slowly giving way to department stores.

The application (VdL-AR), compatible with IOS and Android, is available free of charge in French, English and German.