Stand on the street.
See it a century ago.
Palimpsest is an iPhone companion in development that will overlay historian-checked reconstructions of an earlier era onto the street through your camera — aligned to the building you're actually facing. First expedition: Edinburgh's Royal Mile, circa 1824.
Now & then
This is the gesture at the heart of Palimpsest: one street, two centuries. Drag the handle — or use arrow keys — to rub the present away.
c. 1824 · reconstruction
today · illustration
The High Street toward St Giles' crown steeple, c. 1824. Illustrative reconstruction — a preview sample, not yet reviewed by a historian; period dress, stalls and surfaces conjectural.
One mile. Eight hundred years.
We launch with a single street walked properly rather than a planet skimmed. Six stops down the Royal Mile, castle to palace — every reconstruction checked by a working historian before it reaches your screen.
A plan of the Old Town, shewing the expedition route. Specimen plate — an evocation of period cartography drawn for this preview, not a survey.
-
Castle Esplanade
A parade ground that has been a market, a muster field and a place of execution. Watch the Tattoo grandstands dissolve into gravel and redcoats.
Layers: 1590 · 1824 · 1880 -
The Luckenbooths
A row of locked shops once stood mid-street, hard against St Giles — demolished 1817. The reconstruction brings back a building that no longer exists.
Layers: 1750 · 1800 -
St Giles' & the Mercat Cross
Proclamations, punishments and trade at the city's heart. Hear the cross read out the news of 1824 while the modern square hums beneath it.
Layers: 1617 · 1824 -
Anchor & Bailie Fyfe's Closes
Step off the spine into the narrow wynds where most of the Old Town actually lived — the density the guidebooks flatten.
Layers: 1750 · 1824 -
Canongate Tolbooth
A separate burgh with its own tolls, clock and grudges — until 1856 it wasn't Edinburgh at all.
Layers: 1591 · 1824 -
Holyroodhouse & the Abbey Strand
The mile ends at a palace and a ruined abbey. Sanctuary seekers once sprinted this last stretch one step ahead of their creditors.
Layers: 1671 · 1824
Three gestures, no manual.
Find the spot
The route leads you to where the reconstruction was composed — the corner, the close mouth, the chapel step. Each stop carries its own little expedition map.
Align the overlay
Raise the phone and the reconstruction fades in, pinned to real buildings. On-screen guides nudge you left or right until the ridgelines lock.
Listen to the street
A two-minute story — the hanging at the Cross, the fire of 1824, the last clan gathering — plays while you stand inside the scene it describes.
When the overlay and the masonry agree, the join disappears: the reconstruction becomes the street. If you'd rather not raise a phone, every stop works as a tap-to-compare still — AR is an enhancement, never a gate.
All six stops, stories and maps download ahead: the whole mile works in airplane mode.
How we keep honest.
Reviewed, not generated on the fly
Each shipped scene will be composed from the documentary record — prints, maps, council minutes, insurance plans — then checked by a working historian before it's published into the app. The preview plates here are unreviewed samples.
We ship certainty at the speed of research, not inference at the speed of a GPU.
Uncertainty is drawn, not hidden
Where a facade, a crowd or a colour is conjecture, the app renders it hatched — visible at a glance, labeled on tap. You always know which century is documented and which is guessed.
One city, deeply
Edinburgh first because its Old Town is walkable, obsessed-over and unusually well documented. No instant-worldwide claims — a second city ships only when it meets the same standard.
Candidate next expeditions: York, Boston, Kyoto.
What a mile of history might cost.
Pricing is a hypothesis we're testing in the pilot — not a promise. The first expedition may simply be free while we learn.
City Pack
hypothesis · test A- All six Royal Mile stops, every era layer
- Full audio stories and offline maps
- Yours forever — the pack never expires
Trip Pass
hypothesis · test B- Every city pack unlocked for a trip's length
- Built for the weekend visitor — no subscription
- Converts to a City Pack if you stay in love
Walk the first expedition with us.
Sign-up isn't open yet — there is no waitlist, form or tracking list today, and we're deliberately not pretending otherwise. The plans below describe how the first hundred walkers will be recruited on the Mile and what the pilot build will do.
The iPhone app, on-site alignment and historical review are in development — everything on this page is a preview.