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Archie - your interactive guide

Archie - your
interactive guide

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Discover our new interactive palace app

Visitors to Blenheim Palace can now enjoy personally tailored tours, thanks to a new state of the art app, ‘Archie - your interactive guide’, named in honour of the Palace’s former Administrator and first Chief Guide, Archie Illingworth, who worked there from 1950 to 1972, and retired after the death of the 10th Duke.

The app allows visitors to choose exactly what they would like to see and hear, and allows them to delve into over 300 years’ worth of stories - many of which have never been told before - with several of the narratives shared directly by staff members, giving authenticity and depth to the cultural heritage experience.

The new multimedia platform has been created through Culturati, a groundbreaking Horizon Europe RIA project, for which Britain’s Greatest Palace is the UK pilot site.

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Some of the fascinating stories contained within the interactive guide include:

    • Learn how the Long Library was used as a convalescence hospital during World War I, for soldiers recovering from a variety of ailments and injuries, from gunshot and shrapnel wounds, to shock, pneumonia and dyspepsia.
    • Hear how the grounds of Blenheim Palace were used during World War II to test the guns on Spitfire fighter aircraft.
    • Imagine what it was like as Archie Illingworth shares his own memories of welcoming the House of Dior to Blenheim in 1954, for the first of two fundraising fashion shows organised by the 10th Duchess in aid of the Red Cross.

  • Location Icon

    Palace

  • Price Icon

    Free to download

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