Festung Xperience treats the architecture as its primary medium. Vaults, arches, and walls are used as projection surfaces, with 360° image compositions tailored precisely to each room. Rather than adding large scenic structures, the design lets the existing masonry carry the visual narrative.

A 45-minute audio drama, specially written for the project, runs in sync with the projections. Voices, sound design, and music are choreographed to the spatial rhythm of the fortress, linking individual episodes into a single storyline. The audio system delivers location-based sound to each visitor, so that scenes shift acoustically as they move through the spaces.

Visitors descend beneath Brühl’s Terrace and step into a sequence of rooms where past and present overlap. Cannon smoke rolls across ancient stone, floods sweep through corridors, and the firestorm of 1945 glows on the walls, all framed by the very structure that endured these events.

Because sound is carried individually, visitors move freely while remaining inside the story. They are addressed as direct witnesses, not distant observers, and the fortress itself becomes the narrator. The result feels like walking through a film scene by scene, that is anchored in the reality of the site.

The Dresden Fortress is both a fragile archaeological site and a powerful symbol of the city’s past. The task was to make centuries of history legible for today’s visitors without overloading the rooms with conventional exhibition elements or obscuring the original fabric.

The exhibition needed to guide mixed audiences from tourists to school classes through complex historical events, while keeping the fortress itself as the main exhibit.