i.history

Travel through time

Digital walking tours with AR, 3D and audio across Vorarlberg.

Where history becomes story

In the i.history category, we make the past visible at the very places where events unfolded decades or centuries ago. There’s no room for fiction here: all content is grounded in historical sources, archive material, collaborations with historians and contemporary witness interviews. Technology becomes a window into the past — making records, files and artefacts not only understandable, but truly tangible.

Dornbirn region

hist.appear

On the hist.appear tour, you set out on a journey through time across historical Dornbirn. An interactive map and a colour-coded timeline guide you through different eras, from the Middle Ages to the present. At each location, content opens up on your smartphone or tablet, weaving augmented reality, images, audio, contemporary witness accounts, historical sources and the real city into one immersive history experience.

hist.appear was the very first tour by i.appear and the spark that ignited the whole platform. The pedagogical concept is grounded in the scientific findings of a master’s thesis at the University of Vienna, connecting current AR and VR research with educational approaches. The tour was funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport, and developed in collaboration with the Dornbirner Geschichtswerkstatt (Dornbirn History Workshop).

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Stadtspuren

On the Stadtspuren tour, you discover the industrial and urban history of Dornbirn along the Dornbirner Ach and Müllerbach streams. As the second historical tour in i.appear, Stadtspuren is networked with hist.appear and shares locations at points where space, time and themes overlap. Each location is anchored digitally and physically in the city — with information boards, seating and bike racks. Designed by Saegenvier.

Two perspectives open up at every location: industry and society. The route mostly follows the water from Gütle to Forach, past historical buildings, restored machinery and life-size illustrations by Nikolay Uzunov. The content was developed by the Dornbirn city archive, particularly by Werner Matt and Klaus Fessler. A book of the same name accompanies the tour and can be purchased at the city archive.

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Frauenspuren

From May 2026, the Frauenspuren tour tells 300 years of women’s history in Dornbirn. At each location, you meet a woman who stands for many others – from a resistance fighter to Vorarlberg’s first female doctor, from a social democrat to a Nazi perpetrator. Very different realities of life are made visible.

The content is based on the book Frauenspuren by Roswitha Fessler from the “Dornbirner Schriften” series. Each woman portrayed is linked to the building where her location stands, anchoring her story directly in the cityscape. The illustrations are by Lisa Althaus, and the audio guide is available in both German and English.

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125 Jahre – 125 Bilder

In 2026, Dornbirn celebrates its 125th anniversary as a city. The “125 Jahre – 125 Bilder” (125 Years – 125 Pictures) tour launches in May. Spread across the entire city area, 125 pictures tell stories from everyday life and show how Dornbirn has changed over the past 125 years.

The focus is on neighbourhoods, places and personal perspectives beyond the city centre. You encounter stories where you might not have expected them, and learn about the people who have lived and still live here, and the events that shaped the city. The tour is networked with the other i.appear tours and becomes part of a growing constellation.

Coming soon

Au in the Bregenzerwald

Barockbaumeister

Master baroque builder Franz Beer leads you on a walk from Au in the Bregenzerwald via Bregenz, Konstanz and Rheinau back to Bezau, where his life ended around 300 years ago. As your narrator, he guides you through the tour and tells of his origins, his apprenticeship, his travels and his work across the Lake Constance region. The result is a journey through architectural heritage, biographies and places — making history personal and tangible.

The tour was created as part of the Digital In&Out research project. It was developed as an educational context in collaboration with vorarlberg museum, the University of Konstanz, the Barockbaumeister Museum in Au and the Design Department of the FH Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences.

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Hard on Lake Constance

See Runde

On the See Runde in Hard, you travel along the shore of Lake Constance through the last two centuries of the village. Eight locations guide you through the town, supplemented by invisible locations that only appear when you’re nearby. The tour tells of the former poorhouse and its farm, of everyday life for the poorest, of the maternity ward and the dissection room – accompanied by Fiffi, the street sweeper, a true Hard original.

The See Runde connects real-world settings with digital storytelling, making local history tangible in the public space. The result is a tour that brings past and present together, showing how memory stays alive — across generations and close to the people.

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