The Leaning Tower

Immersive Cinema – Experience history up close

Der Schiefe Turm (The Leaning Tower) has shaped the cityscape of Bad Frankenhausen for centuries. In the Immersive Cinema of the new visitor centre, its history can now be experienced through projections onto three walls and the floor. Two ten-minute short films recount the tower’s origins, its tilt and its restoration, as well as the construction process of the new visitor centre.

Together with our partner Gecko 1, we developed the audiovisual design for the two short films. Whilst Gecko 1 produced the film footage, we took charge of the design and production pipeline for the 3D visuals. To achieve this, we created a detailed 3D model of the Leaning Tower, which blends with the live-action footage using animations and custom shaders. We also handled the sound design and the final multi-channel audio mix.

To get a feel for the eventual spatial experience and to fine-tune the content in advance, we relied on our own previsualisation in Unity right from the conception phase. This 360° simulation environment allowed us to evaluate the current state of the project directly within the virtual cinema space – an important tool for communicating with our project partners.

The immersive cinema is operated by a single media server, which controls all end devices via an intelligent signal distribution system using Datapath controllers. The walls and floor are projected onto with a panoramic resolution of almost 16K. A total of 14 high-performance projectors collectively project more than 34 million pixels into the eleven-metre-long room. To ensure that these 14 individual images form a coherent picture without visible overlaps, we adjusted the projection mapping in two stages: a rough alignment directly on the projectors, followed by fine-tuning in Resolume.


Day-to-day museum operations are largely automated. However, if required, the cinema can be conveniently started, stopped, switched to English or jumped to specific chapters from anywhere via our web interface.