Abstract
A problem facing many custodians and curators of historic buildings is how to create a sense of history and awaken a connection with the past for contemporary visitors. With the help of secondary material such as video projections, audio guides and costumed interpreters, visitors are enabled to imagine what life might have been like before the building was ‘museumified’. This article discusses Peter Greenaway’s video installation Peopling the Palaces, created for a seventeenth‐century Italian Palace in Turin, and examines its potential as a means of returning ‘life’ to preserved historic interiors. Greenaway’s installation is a prime example of how projecting characters directly onto walls and ceilings can bring a building to life and envelope the visitor within an historical imaginary. The article proposes that this fascinating meeting of theatre, technology and museology within a historic Palace offers exciting potential for augmenting the visitor experience of heritage sites.
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