Background
France's national memory sites -- former prisons, necropolises and war memorials -- sit close to a rail network that carries millions of travellers past them every year. BavAR[t], a French provider of cultural augmented reality experiences, won the Ministry of Armed Forces' "Innovative Digital Services for Memorial Tourism" competition with a proposal to close that gap: a hybrid trail, branded EN GARE, that turns a routine journey into a moment of remembrance.
The deployment
The programme pairs each participating SNCF station with a nearby national memory site. In the station itself, a physical photographic exhibition of archive images, posters and testimonies greets passengers. The BavAR[t] mobile app then extends that display: historical archive material is overlaid on the platforms in augmented reality, and a geolocated trail guides the visitor out of the station and on to the memorial, where the experience continues in greater depth.
BavAR[t] describes the journey in three acts -- the station as a space of daily circulation, the hidden memorial dimension revealed through AR overlays on the platforms, and the geolocated route out to the memorial site itself.
Stations and memorial sites
Five station-and-memorial pairings are being deployed progressively across the SNCF network between December 2025 and March 2027:
- Lyon-Part-Dieu -- Montluc Prison National Memorial (December 2025)
- Saint-Raphael Valescure -- Indochina War Memorial, Frejus (May 2026)
- Verdun -- Fleury-devant-Douaumont National Necropolis (September 2026)
- Toulon -- Memorial of the Landing and Liberation of Provence, Mont Faron (October 2026)
- Strasbourg -- Natzweiler-Struthof Memorial (March 2027)
Content and access
Across the five sites the programme comprises 50 digital points of interest, each combining an AR animation, audio content, a quiz and a descriptive text. The digital layer draws on a wider pool of photographs and archival material than the printed panels can carry, giving visitors depth and context beyond the physical exhibition. The experience is free, requires no ticket or booking, and is available in four languages -- French, English, Spanish and German.
Partners and delivery
BavAR[t] supplies the immersive platform and the AR infrastructure, while the institutional partners contribute archival, historical and educational content. The programme is led by the French Ministry of Armed Forces, through its national office for veterans and war victims (ONaCVG), alongside SNCF Gares & Connexions, the SNCF subsidiary responsible for the design, operation and retail space of France's stations, with support from the Directorate of Memory, Culture and Archives. Depending on the site, ECPAD, FNAM, La France Mutualiste and Les Gueules Cassees also take part.
BavAR[t]'s chief operating officer, quoted below, framed the programme as turning mobility spaces into shared memory journeys.
