Tour St. Louis Cathedral without ever leaving home

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

With the possible exception of Rome and St. Peter’s Basilica, there is no city in the world other than New Orleans that instantly can be recognized, even by a secular audience, through the image of its Catholic cathedral.

Besides serving as the spiritual home of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, St. Louis Cathedral – the oldest continuously active cathedral in the United States – annually welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors through its doors, many of whom are not even Catholic.

Until now, to get a view, visitors had to have their feet firmly planted on the sacred space steps from the Mississippi River, where the first cathedral was built in 1727.

But, now, with the aid of high-definition photography and other digital assistance provided by computer programmers, people across the world can make a virtual, 360-degree tour of the cathedral without ever leaving home.

Hidden treasures explored
The virtual walk-through tour – accessible at www.cathedraltour.org – provides an inside look at the cathedral’s many hidden sacred treasures and their historical context, all in crisp color. The tour is similar to taking a stroll through a neighborhood on Google maps, but an added layer of information is made possible by 43 interactive content buttons that create pop-up boxes filled with background information on a particular stained-glass window, ceiling mural or statue.

The idea for the virtual tour was hatched by Nataly Scheuermann, business and communications coordinator for the cathedral, who said the goals of the project were to augment the cathedral’s on-site docent tours as well as to expand evangelization not only to school groups but also to a worldwide audience.

“We wanted to meet the needs of the tourists, because we obviously understand we are a tourist attraction as part of the city,” Scheuermann said. “But we also wanted to make sure we were keeping with the reverence of the church.”

Classroom learning enhanced
As a former teacher, Scheuermann understood how valuable a virtual tour might be for school groups. While field trips to the cathedral have resumed in the wake of the pandemic, there are many schools whose students can’t get down to the French Quarter but who could benefit by learning about the cathedral within the classroom, she said.

“There are probably a lot of local students who don’t know what they should know about the history that lives within their backyards,” Scheuermann said. “Honestly, a lot of us who live in New Orleans take it for granted that it’s right here. Students probably don’t learn as much about the cathedral as they should.

“With Smartboard technology in schools, a religion teacher could pull this up and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to the cathedral today and literally get every piece of information that they would if they were walking through it with one of our tour guides.”

Scheuermann turned to Stephen Young, founder of www.beauxtiful.com, for the digital expertise. Young already had completed enhanced virtual tours for several Catholic schools in the archdiocese – including St. Cletus and St. Francis Xavier elementary schools, and Jesuit, Archbishop Rummel and Archbishop Shaw high schools. (See URL codes below)

Even though he has created nearly 1,000 virtual tours of New Orleans sites over the last 10 years for the Google platform, Young viewed St. Louis Cathedral as a special commission because of its historical importance.

Young said he wasn’t even fully aware of the cathedral’s rich history until he was taping a welcome video with Father Philip Landry, the cathedral’s rector, who offhandedly mentioned that this was the “oldest active cathedral in the United States.”

“At that moment, I realized how big this thing was going to be and how much attention this thing was going to get,” Young said. “I’m Episcopalian, so I tell people I’m ‘Diet Catholic.’ This opened my eyes to the beauty of the cathedral. If we can share some tidbit of the cathedral with people who already feel like they know the cathedral, that will be great. And, then, there’s the rest of the world.”

The technical aspects of the project are fascinating. For each main image along the “map” inside the cathedral, Young set his camera on a tripod and took three shots in each of four directions – north, south, east and west. The three shots in each direction – stitched together in the final product – are taken at different exposures, giving the merged image a vivid, crisp look.

A 360-degree view
The program allows the viewer to take a 360-degree look around each way station.

The augmented program also goes deeper to provide information boxes on items of special interest. Each of the stained-glass windows that are devoted to the cathedral’s patron, St. Louis IX, King of France, has pop-up text to explain the scene.

The items that are unique to a cathedral basilica – such as the umbrella and bell with ties to the pope – are explained through info boxes. The two rows of flags that hang from each balcony – which include the papal flag, the U.S. flag and the flags of the other six dioceses of Louisiana – are also explained.

Father Landry said the virtual tour is the culmination of a dream “about all that we could accomplish here at the cathedral, not only as a spiritual community but also as a staff reaching out to our parishioners, the New Orleans community and visitors.”

Scheuermann said the cathedral has about 10 volunteer docents who provide free onsite guided tours, and that will not change. Their schedules vary, so the digital tour is a way to ensure that visitors can use their smart phones to do a self-guided tour when a docent is not available.

“On our average tour, you don’t get to go in the choir loft, but if you click on ‘choir loft view’ you get that perspective, which is different from what the average person would get,” Scheuermann said.

Before the site even went live, it was viewed by more than 25,000 viewers on Google, Scheuermann said.

“I just joked with Nataly, we’re probably going to break the internet,” Young said.

pfinney@clarionherald.org

 St. Louis Cathedral

Jesuit High School

Archbishop Rummel High School

St. Francis Xavier School

Archbishop Shaw High School

St. Cletus School