Self-guided tours · works with no signal at all
Stand where it happened. Watch it happen.
Hindsight is a tour you download at the gate and walk on your own. The narration finds you by where you stand, the plaques answer when you tap them, and the camera shows you the room as it was a century ago.
Kolmanskop, the diamond town the Namib is taking back. Two stops, one zone, two tagged rooms, and 161 MB that lives on your phone.
Drag the handle. Left is 1912, generated from the photograph on the right and always labelled as a reconstruction.
Four things happen on the walk
01
You download it at the gate
Narration, maps and every clip travel with you. From then on the tour needs no signal, and there is none out there anyway.
02
It speaks when you arrive
Walk within thirty metres of a stop and the guide begins. No numbers to key in, no order to keep to.
03
You look through the camera
Hold up the phone and the ridge fills back in. Drag a century under your finger and watch the sand leave the room.
04
You tap the plaque
Indoors, where satellites do not reach, a tag on the doorframe opens that room and the photographs taken in it.
The feed
The people who work there tell you the rest
Between the stops there is a feed of short clips: a photograph and the words somebody would say standing at its doorway. Guides, curators and families who lived there write them, and every one is credited.
Nothing reaches a visitor unread. The tour's curator approves each story before it joins the walk.
Where you can walk
All toursKolmanskop Ghost Town
Lüderitz, Namibia
A diamond town built in the desert, abandoned to the Namib, and being taken back by the sand a room at a time.
About 75 minutes · 2 languages · 161 MB · 1908–1956
AvailableLüderitz Old Town
Lüderitz, Namibia
A German harbour town wedged between the Atlantic and the Namib, built on guano, diamonds and stubbornness.
About 55 minutes · 2 languages · 94 MB · 1883–1945
Coming soonSwakopmund Old Town
Swakopmund, Namibia
A German seaside town on the edge of the Namib, and the colonial history under its promenade.
About 60 minutes · 2 languages · 120 MB · 1892–1945
Coming soonIf you look after the place
More history than a printed board can hold
Heritage sites, reserves, estates and museums run Hindsight as their own app — their colours, their typeface, their words. Your staff add the stories themselves; you approve what a visitor hears.
Your app, not ours
Visitors download your name and your icon. One configuration file carries the whole identity.
A portal your staff use
Guides submit photographs and words from a phone, standing in the room. You approve or send back.
Nothing to install on site
Tags on the doorframes, no wiring, no beacons to charge, no network at the ruin.
Sold in your languages
A pack per language, narrated. Adding one is a translation and a pipeline run, not a rebuild.
Everything the visitor touches works with no signal at all.
The desert kept the rooms. We kept the record.