Description
Team
The Ledra Palace Hotel
The Exhibition
The Technologies
Publications and Presentations
Description
Difficult Heritage and Emerging Technologies:
The Ledra Palace Museum Project
Through a layered collection of testimonials and the use of new technologies we attempt to ‘revive’ the history of the iconic Ledra Palace Hotel (located in the divided buffer zone of Cyprus) and by extension the turbulent modern history of Cyprus in a multivocal way. The “Ledra Palace Museum Project” (2018-2022) investigates the representation of difficult history in museums, through extensive archival research, development of new technological tools, an edited volume with international case studies, and journal publications. It also includes one of the most attended temporary exhibitions at the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia, and an award-winning exhibition catalogue.
Project Description:
The idea for this project is based on the notion that museums dealing with difficult heritage can use technology to facilitate participatory and collaborative approaches, and actively engage different groups and communities (especially marginalized or silenced ones).
The first phase of the project started in 2018 and included the development of key concepts and theoretical research on museums, difficult history, and technology. This resulted in several publications and an edited volume with international case studies (“Emerging Technologies and Museums: Mediating Difficult Heritage”, Berghahn Books, 2022). It also included the development of some pilot technologies (particularly a holographic pyramid projecting images and photos of the hotel history and a Virtual Reality navigation in the hotel as it is today) that were originally presented at the Buffer Fringe Festival in Nicosia (2019). During this phase, the Ledra Palace Hotel was identified as the most appropriate case to test our theorical discussions and apply our research. The Hotel exemplified Cyprus’ booming modernity, but also the country’s troubled recent history and therefore provided a “vessel” through which we could discuss issues of contested history.
The second phase started at the end of 2019 with a strong and productive collaboration with Nicosia’s leading historical museum: the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia. CYENS Centre of Excellence and the Museum partnered up to create a temporary exhibition in 2021 titled “Ledra Palace: Dancing on the Line” which combined traditional methods of exhibiting with novel technological applications. The exhibition focused on a bottom-up approach providing the means and the space for the communication of people’s stories and memories, usually omitted from Cyprus’s official history. It succeeded in engaging hundreds of people all over the island who willingly and enthusiastically shared their memories and memorabilia, through social media, physical meetings or by phone, even during the difficult months of the lockdowns. The exhibition itself attracted more than 20.000 people from around the island and abroad (the exhibition was opened from June 1st to October 30th 2021), while special guided tours and educational programs were delivered to members of the community, schoolchildren, politicians, diplomats, and academics. The exhibition was inaugurated by the President of the Cyprus Parliament and was disseminated extensively in the press across the divide. It was also accompanied by an edited volume/exhibition catalogue, which in 2022 won the gold award in the Carob Design Awards in Cyprus.
The qualities which make this project outstanding in a European context are (a) the strong theoretical contextualization on the intersections of difficult heritage, museums, and technology, (b) the application of these theories in an exhibition which dealt with the difficult modern history of Cyprus, and (c) the development of innovative technological applications that allowed multi-layered and multitemporal narratives.
Team
The Ledra Palace Museum Project Team
General Project Coordinator:
Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert (CYENS Centre of Excellence/ Cyprus University of Technology)
Museum & Difficult Heritage Theoretical Research:
Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert (coordinator, CYENS Centre of Excellence/ Cyprus University of Technology),
Alexandra Bounia (University of the Aegean),
Antigone Heraclidou (CYENS Centre of Excellence)
Historical and Crowdsourcing Research about the Ledra Palace Hotel:
Antigone Heraclidou (coordinator, CYENS Centre of Excellence),
Loukia Loizou Hadjigavriel (A. G. Leventis Gallery),
Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert (CYENS Centre of Excellence/ Cyprus University of Technology)
Technology Research and Development/ CYENS Centre of Excellence:
Kleanthis Neokleous (coordinator),
Panayiotis Kyriakou,
Fotos Frangoudes,
Demetris Shammas,
Savvas Avraam,
Marios Hadjiaros,
Marios Constantinides &
Thinker Maker Space
Exhibition Development/ Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia:
Demetra Theodotou Anagnostopoulou (coordinator),
Loukia Loizou Hadjigavriel (chief-curator),
Antigone Heraclidou (curator),
Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert (curator),
Maria Patsalosavvi (administration),
Sophia Christodoulou (administration),
Nayia Savvides (architectural design and supervision),
Tzeni Lymperopoulou (educational programs),
appios® creative studio (exhibition graphics/ branding)
Exhibition Catalogue Authors:
Savvas Avraam,
Marios Avraamides,
Fotos Frangoudes,
Antigone Heraclidou,
Panayiotis Kyriakou,
Loukia Loizou Hadjigavriel,
Kleanthis Neokleous,
Eleni S. Nikita,
Savia Palate,
Elena Parpa,
Petros Phokaides,
Esra Plümer Bardak,
Panayiota Pyla,
Demetris Shammas,
Katerina Stephanides,
Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert
International Volume Authors:
Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert (editor),
Alexandra Bounia (editor),
Antigone Heraclidou (editor),
Edward González-Tennant,
Sharon Webb,
Anna Foka,
Jenny Attemark,
Fredrik Wahlberg,
Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin,
Elena Stylianou,
Lily Hibberd,
Colin Sterling,
Francesca Lanz,
Elena Montanari,
Sarah Kenderdine,
Jenny Kidd,
Arran J. Rees
The Ledra Palace Hotel
Images: © Press and Information Office, Photo Archive
Ledra Palace Hotel: a Short History
In the summer of 1946 three businessmen, George Skyrianides, owner of the Forest Park Hotel in Platres, George Poulias, Vice Mayor of Nicosia, and Dimitris Zerbinis, a Greek businessman in Egypt, agreed on the establishment of a luxury hotel in Nicosia. The gap of first-class accommodation facilities in the city became apparent after the establishment of the Nicosia airport which contributed to an increased inflow of businessmen and tourists. The cost of the hotel, including the land and the interior decoration amounted to more than £250,000, a great amount for the time. The hotel began its operation in October 1949 and immediately became the pride of Nicosia. It was designed by the German-Jewish architect Benjamin Günsberg, who oversaw the construction of several buildings in Cyprus. Local artists and craftsmen were commissioned for its furnishing and interior decoration. Initially the two-floors hotel had 93 rooms each of them with a private bathroom, phone and air conditioning. The hotel had spacious lounges, dining and events rooms as well as many novel amenities, like a barber shop and a hair salon, shops, a petrol station and of course, beautiful gardens, a tennis court and as of 1964, a swimming pool. In the following decades, the hotel was to be extended with the addition of three more floors raising the number of rooms to 240.
The Ledra Palace hotel retains a significant place in the modern history of Cyprus, not least because of its touristic and economic value as the first hotel in its category. In fact, it became widely known as a place with political significance, for it provided the background to many important events that shaped the modern history of the island. For example, during the EOKA revolt (1955-59), the hotel was caught in the heat of the struggle when Governor Harding marginally escaped an attempted assassination by a bomb placed underneath his seat in the hotel’s Ballroom. In the following years, the Ledra Palace Hotel hosted a series of significant events linked to the island’s new status as an independent state such as the meetings of the ad hoc constitutional committee, the erection of sandbags in the hotel’s yard following intercommunal strife in 1964, as well as bi-communal negotiations on the Cyprus problem, as well as international events such as the Conference of Asian and African countries in 1963, a United Nations Human Rights seminar in 1969 and the 5th International Conference of the Balkan Medical Union in 1970. At the same time, the Ledra Palace hotel epitomised the cosmopolitan side of Cyprus. Until it stopped operating as a hotel, it hosted a plethora of social events, like carnival parties, charity events, general assemblies, fashion shows and beauty pageants, as well as more than 80 art exhibitions.
In 1969 the hotel’s ownership changed when, after Zerbinis passed away, his family decided to sell his share which was eventually bought by the Archbishopric of Cyprus. Today, the hotel belongs to a company called Ledra Hotels Ltd with approximately 300 small shareholders along with the Archbishopric. In the summer of 1974, Ledra Palace stopped operating as a hotel when it was occupied by the Canadian detachment of the United Nations in Cyprus to avoid bombardment, as it was then said, by the Turkish occupation troops. Since then, and despite efforts made for the re-opening of the place as a hotel, the Ledra Palace has been used for accommodation for the United Nations forces with the government’s consent and as a venue for high-level meetings for the solution of the Cyprus problem, as well as for civil society bicommunal meetings.
Currently, the hotel is deteriorating and is in need for major renovations. The UNFICYP only uses the ground floor and the gardens of the hotel since its rooms were deemed unsafe and unsuitable for use.
Listen to the podcast here: http://bitly.ws/FeaE
The Exhibition
“Ledra Palace: Dancing on the Line” Exhibition
Location: the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia, Cyprus
Organization: Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia & CYENS Centre of Excellence
Duration: June 1st to October 30th 2021
The CYENS Centre of Excellence and the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia partnered up to create a temporary exhibition in 2021 titled “Ledra Palace: Dancing on the Line” which combined traditional methods of exhibiting with novel technological applications. The exhibition focused on a bottom-up approach providing the means and the space for the communication of people’s stories and memories, usually omitted from Cyprus’s official history. It succeeded in engaging hundreds of people all over the island who willingly and enthusiastically shared their memories and memorabilia, through social media, physical meetings or by phone, even during the difficult months of the lockdowns. The exhibition itself attracted more than 20.000 people from around the island and abroad, while special guided tours and educational programs were delivered to members of the community, schoolchildren, politicians, diplomats, and academics. The exhibition was inaugurated by the President of the Cyprus Parliament and was disseminated extensively in the press across the divide. It was also accompanied by an edited volume/exhibition catalogue, which in 2022 won the gold award in the Carob Design Awards in Cyprus.
→ Explore a 360 of the Exhibition
The Technologies
→ The technologies and installations of the exhibition
For the purposes of this exhibition, CYENS worked with two Groups at the CYENS Centre of Excellence, one with expertise in history and museum studies (Museum Lab) and the other in emerging technologies (ITICA), in close collaboration with the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia for the design of the applications. The installations created for the Ledra Palace exhibition include immersive Virtual Reality [VR] experiences and Augmented Reality [AR] interactions.
VR reconstruction:
In a specifically curated area, visitors could sit at a table with two VR headsets and immerse themselves in a virtual reconstruction of the hotel’s ballroom as it was in 1960.
Interactive book:
Users had the tangible feeling of touching and turning the pages of a physical book, yet the displayed content of each page was digitally compiled with animated audio-visual information. The setup included a 20-page physical book, a short-throw projector, and a Depth Camera.
Interactive table:
Five original objects from the hotel were scanned 3D printed and arranged on a custom-made table. The installation consisted of a 55-inch TV and a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader embedded in the table. Visitors could pick any of the objects and place them on the table. The system could then recognise the object and trigger a corresponding animated response on the table surface.
Publications and Presentations
Books:
Stylianou-Lambert, T., Heraclidou, A., & Bounia, A. (Eds. 2022). Emerging Technologies and Museums: Mediating Difficult Heritage. Berghman Books.
The introduction of the book can be downloaded from here: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/Stylianou-LambertEmerging#toc
Stylianou-Lambert, T., Heraclidou, A. & Hadjigavriel-Loizou, L. (Eds. 2021). Ledra Palace: Dancing on the Line. Nicosia: A.G. Leventis Foundation.
Peered-review Journal:
Heraclidou, A. & Stylianou-Lambert, T. (2022). The Ledra Palace Hotel and the ‘difficult history’ of modern Cyprus. Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. pp. 1-20.
Paper can be downloaded here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/byzantine-and-modern-greek-studies/article/ledra-palace-hotel-and-the-difficult-history-of-modern-cyprus/E5586DCB3EC9F6CE0743E898E228AAF0
Book Chapter:
Stylianou-Lambert, T. & Heraclidou, A. (in production, forthcoming, 2023). Photographic Representatoions of Colonial Cyprus and the Ledra Palace Hotel. In M. Hatsiathanasiou & A. Kyryos (eds.) “Culture in Cyprus under British rule, 1878-1960”. Bloomsbury.
Refereed Conference Proceedings:
Heraclidou, A., Ioannou, C., Frangoudes, F., Kyriacou, P., Avraam, S., Neokleous, K., Avraamides, M. and Stylianou-Lambert, T. (2022). The Ledra Palace project: Using emerging technologies to communicate exhibition content- Evaluation of results. Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Interactive Media, Smart Systems and Emerging Technologies (IMET). IEEE.
Heraclidou, A. & Stylianou-Lambert, T. (2020). Dealing with Difficult history: the “Ledra Palace” project. Proceedings of the conference “Free and Open Source Technologies, Arts and Commoning Practices: An Unconference about Art, Design, Technology, Making, Cities and their Communities.” pp. 98-102.
Presentations:
2022, Nicosia, Cyprus – The Ledra Palace project: Using emerging technologies to communicate exhibition content- Evaluation of results. 2022 International Conference on Interactive Media, Smart Systems and Emerging Technologies (IMET). IEEE. (Heraclidou, A., Ioannou, C., Frangoudes, F., Kyriacou, P., Avraam, S., Neokleous, K., Avraamides, M. and Stylianou-Lambert, T.)
2022, Tromso, Norway – Centre of Peace Studies/ The Arctic University of Norway, presentation “Emerging Technologies and Museums: Mediating Difficult History” (Feb. 2022) (Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert & Antigone Heraclidou)
2021, Nicosia, Cyprus – Centre of Social Innovation, Presentation “Ledra Palace: Dancing on the Line: Using emerging technologies to discuss difficult history in a museum setting” (Oct. 2021) (Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert & Antigone Heraclidou)
2021, Nicosia, Cyprus (virtual) – Using digital collections of museums to deliver and enhance the curriculum in VET. Food Museum Conference. Presentation of paper “The Ledra Palace project: Using emerging technologies to discuss difficult history in a museum setting” (Antigone Heraclidou).
2020, Nicosia, Cyprus – Department of History and Archaeology, University of Cyprus, virtual lecture, Presentation “Ledra Palace Hotel: Reflecting the History of Cyprus” (Nov. 2020, in Greek) (Antigone Heraclidou & Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert)
2020, Nicosia, Cyprus (virtual) – Museums for All, Frederick University/ Ministry of Education and Culture, Cyprus. Presentation of paper “Emerging Technologies in Museums Mediating Difficult History” (Antigone Heraclidou).
2019, London, UK (virtual) – 5th Association of Critical Studies Biennial Conference. Presentation of paper “The Ledra Palace Museum project: exploring difficult history in Cyprus” (Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert & Antigone Heraclidou).
2019, Nicosia, Cyprus – International Conference on Colonial Cyprus. Presentation of paper “’Building’ the Ledra Palace Museum: The history of a place reflecting the history of a country” (Antigone Heraclidou & Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert).
2018, Chicago, USA – Fostering Transparency, Strengthening Public Trust, Visitor Studies Association. Presentation of paper “The Unsafe Museum” (Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert & Alexandra Bounia)
2018, Hangzhou, China – Heritage Across Boarders. Association of Critical Heritage Studies, 4th Biennial Conference. Presentation of paper “The Unsafe Museum” (Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert & Alexandra Bounia)
Photographs of the exhibition
Acknowledgements
General Coordination
Demetra Theodotou-Anagnostopoulou
Maria Patsalosavvi (Assistant)
Curators
Loukia Loizou-Hadjigavriel
Antigone Heraclidou
Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert
Architectural Design and Supervision
Nayia Savvides
CYENS Technology Team
Kleanthis Neokleous, Panayiotis Kyriakou, Fotos Frangoudes, Demetris Shammas, Savvas Avraam, Marios Hadjiaros, Thinker Maker Space
Narration
Andreas Araouzos
Film Production
The Coffee Films
Editing
Alexandra Pel (English) Georgia M. Panselina (Greek)
Translation
Sotirios Lappas, Vassilis Vavoulis, Fotini Pipi
Educational Programmes
Tzeni Lymperopoulu
Administration
Maria Patsalosavvi, Sophia Christodoulou
Exhibition Graphics/Branding
appios® creative studio
Technical Works
Yiannos Kyriakou, Argyris Argyrou
Exhibition Details
Exhibition
Ledra Palace: Dancing on the Line
Duration
1st June – 31st October 2021
Venue
The Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia
Exhibition Catalogue
‘LEDRA PALACE: ΧΟΡΕΥΟΝΤΑΣ ΣΕ ΜΙΑ ΓΡΑΜΜΗ / DANCING ON THE LINE’
The exhibition is accompanied with a 274 pages impressive publication rich in essays and photographs provided by academics and researchers, who approached the Ledra Palace from various points of view.
Editors: Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, Loukia Loizou Hadjigavriel and Antigone Heraclidou
Language: Greek and English
Text Editing: Alexandra Pel (English) Georgia M. Panselina (Greek)
Translation: Sotirios Lappas, Vassilis Vavoulis, Fotini Pipi
Photography (Exhibits): Anna Maria Hadjigavriel, Pavlos Loizides
Graphic Design: appios® creative studio
Printing: Laser Graphics Ltd