One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World can be visited right here in the capital. After taking the world by storm and captivating over a million visitors, Madrid welcomes The Horizon of Cheops, an immersive expedition developed in collaboration with Harvard that offers a 4,500-year leap back in time and space, without leaving Nuevos Ministerios.
A journey to ancient Egypt thanks to virtual reality
The Horizon of Cheops is a free-roaming virtual reality experience conceived by the French studio Excurio. During the 45-minute experience, visitors physically walk through an open space while exploring the legendary Giza Plateau and discovering all its secrets.
Guided by Mona, a virtual Egyptologist, the tour begins at the foot of the Great Pyramid and continues through galleries and passageways closed to the public in real life. The tour also includes monuments such as the Great Sphinx and a boat ride on the Nile, and culminates in one of the most sacred rituals in the history of ancient Egypt: the embalming ceremony and funeral of Pharaoh Khufu.
Developed in collaboration with Harvard University
The detailed visuals and engaging narrative have made this experience an international success, but it is its historical accuracy that sets it apart as unique in the world: The Horizon of Cheops is the result of three years of meticulous scientific research in direct collaboration with Harvard University.
The project was supervised by Peter Der Manuelian, professor of Egyptology and director of the Giza Project, a Harvard initiative dedicated to collecting, digitizing, and preserving the archaeological records of the pyramids. In fact, the project manages what is likely the world’s largest digital archive on Giza, with documentation dating back to the joint expeditions of Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, conducted between 1904 and 1947.
This catalog of architectural plans, photographs, field journals, and 3D models has allowed the developers of The Horizon of Cheops to reconstruct the exact topography of the Giza Plateau, recreate the monuments as they were in antiquity, and ensure that every detail of the experience remains true to reality, and thus offer, in the words of its creators, “an adventure to discover the interior of the Pyramid of Cheops” suitable for all audiences.