The Ledra Palace Museum project deals with the representation of difficult history in museums and investigates ways in which technology can help to overcome any obstacles this entails. Despite its decadence, the Ledra Palace Hotel remains a beautiful and interesting place with a history worth to be told. Our aim is, through an extensive archival research, as well as a layered collection of testimonials (interviews and crowdsourcing), to ‘revive’ the history of the Ledra Palace hotel in a more multivocal and multilayered way. This project is mostly based on the notion that museums dealing with difficult heritage can use technology to facilitate participatory and collaborative approaches, and actively engage different groups and communities (especially excluded, marginalized or silenced ones) in order to tell contested histories. We are therefore, interested in stories of people who experienced the Ledra Palace hotel in different ways or capacities: as guests, as audience in a concert or a show, as participants in conferences, business or work meetings, as employees, or as soldiers. Since this could not be done on the actual site of the hotel, we tried to create a museum ‘in the wild’ with the use of interactive media and new technologies. We therefore proceeded, with the cooperation of the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia to the organisation of the temporary exhibition Ledra Palace: Dancing on the Line. The exhibition contains both physical exhibits and technological applications which enable us to explore and discuss both the history of the hotel, and the history of our island.

The ITICA MRG Group is working together with the Museum Lab for the implementation of the interactive and immersive experiences developed for the project.

Exhibition: Ledra Palace: Dancing on the Line

Duration: 01/06 – 31/10 2021

Venue: The Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia

Curators: Loukia Loizou-Hadjigavriel, Antigone Heraclidou, Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert

General Coordination: Demetra Theodotou-Anagnostopoulou