A Whisper of Six Centuries: Transforming Grote Kerk Naarden Through Immersive Audio Storytelling

The Challenge

Grote Kerk Naarden wanted visitors to truly experience six centuries of history, rather than simply observe it. The experience needed to feel immersive and accessible without disrupting the church’s sacred atmosphere.

The Solution

XPEX, together with Big Orange and Guide-ID, created a hands-free, layered audio journey using beacons and custom seating. Binaural recordings, narrative structure, and invisible technology allow the building itself to tell its story.

The Results

Visitors now experience the church through rich, emotional soundscapes that bring history vividly to life. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with guests praising the immersion, clarity, and sense of connection.

Bringing History to Life

Naarden, a uniquely star-shaped village at the centre of the Netherlands, was historically designed as a fortified town to protect its residents during the Eighty Years’ War from 1568 to 1648. Its strategic location made it a critical military target, and the fortifications were carefully constructed to withstand artillery attacks and control access through the region.

Today, Naarden retains its charming historic infrastructure, with the iconic Grote Kerk Naarden standing at the heart of the village.

Consecrated in 1479, Grote Kerk Naarden is one of the Netherlands’ most remarkable monumental churches. Its breathtaking interior, rich history, and architectural grandeur continue to make it a landmark for both local residents and visitors.

While the church remains a place of worship, its team sought to create a new experience that would allow visitors to connect with the centuries of history embedded in its walls.

As part of Grote Kerk Naarden’s efforts to share its rich story with the public in a new and attractive way, the organisation decided to partner with XPEX, a concept and design agency established in 2008 and renowned for its innovative work in the heritage and museum sector.

Over seventeen years, XPEX has developed museum innovations and exhibitions for cultural institutions, monuments, nature organisations, and healthcare organisations. Its unique approach combines content, design, and experience to create meaningful visitor engagement.

The XPEX team was tasked with creating an immersive experience for Grote Kerk Naarden. The goal was to highlight the church itself, allowing visitors to discover the traces of six centuries of history visible throughout its architecture.

From scratch marks left by pilgrims to discolourations that hint at past fires, it is a place where every detail and every corner has a story to tell.

A Multi-Partner Approach

To translate this vision into an engaging and immersive experience, XPEX collaborated with Big Orange and Guide-ID. Big Orange contributed expertise in audio production, while Guide-ID brought both technology and practical knowledge, providing the Podcatcher Pro audio guide system and integrating beacon technology into custom-designed seating to create a truly hands-free visitor experience.

The design concept XPEX aimed to achieve was a structured narrative composed of three layers:

Earthly stories: Events such as fires and wars.
Intersecting stories: Moments where human life meets spiritual or historical significance, such as births and deaths.
Heavenly stories: The spiritual aspects of the church, culminating in the Choir, which was historically reserved for members of the clergy.

The structure of the route aligns closely with the narrative journey. Visitors ultimately arrive in the Choir, the most heavenly and historically sacred part of the church.

As a complement to the route, specially designed seats were installed throughout the church to serve as subtle markers, guiding visitors through the story in a natural and intuitive sequence.

Each seat contains hidden beacons that work seamlessly with the Podcatcher Pro, automatically triggering the audio at precisely the right moment. This hands-free design allows visitors to immerse themselves fully in the experience, free from screens and manual controls.

Audio as an Immersive Tool

The use of layered audio allows visitors to feel simultaneously present in the church and within the historical events it has witnessed.

The Netherlands Bach Society, the oldest Baroque music ensemble in the Netherlands, was founded in Grote Kerk Naarden for performances of the St Matthew Passion. The ensemble contributed audio from the St Matthew Passion and sung texts to the experience.

These elements were recorded by Big Orange using binaural microphones, an audio technique that gives visitors the impression of standing among the performers.

The result is a multisensory experience that communicates both the historical and emotional resonance of the church.

Guide-ID’s Role and Advantages

Guide-ID’s Podcatcher Pro offered simplicity and accessibility. The system’s ease of use, automatic triggering, and compatibility with the church’s custom seating ensured that visitors could focus on the experience rather than the technology.

Challenges such as testing the system with previously untested materials and designing a logical audio route were successfully overcome through collaborative problem-solving between XPEX, Big Orange, and Guide-ID.

Thomas Fikken, Business Development Manager at Guide-ID:

“From the start, we shared the same goal with XPEX: let the technology disappear so the story can take centre stage. Embedding beacons into custom seating was new territory for everyone. We were able to explore the materials and requirements together with XPEX, testing and iterating until everything worked perfectly. That flexibility is what makes these collaborations successful.”

Elvire Jansen, Creative Director and Co-owner of XPEX:

“We are satisfied with the final result. The layered audio, the unique recordings, and the story-driven structure create a completely new experience that can be enjoyed in an accessible way by a wide range of visitors.”

Immersion Through Sound and Space

A few months after the experience opened, feedback had been consistently positive. Visitors described the audio as rich and immersive, and the overall response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

Many guests highlighted the clarity and quality of the sound, explaining that it allowed them to immerse themselves fully in the story without distraction.

One unexpected success was the seating designed specifically for the project. The seats give visitors permission to pause, look up, slow down, and truly lose themselves in the experience.

Visitors often express surprise at how pleasant it is to simply sit and listen, allowing the building and its soundscape to surround them. The seats have become more than functional elements; they are emotional touchpoints within the visitor journey.

These responses demonstrate that the experience has achieved exactly what the team hoped for: an accessible, atmospheric, and deeply engaging encounter with the church’s history.

Impact and Future Possibilities

Visitors can now explore Grote Kerk Naarden in a way that combines visual discovery with rich, layered audio storytelling.

The success of this collaboration demonstrates the potential for audio-based experiences to transform historical sites into interactive and memorable destinations, offering a model for future partnerships between heritage institutions, creative agencies, and technology providers.