Presenting a monument in restoration: the Saint Laurentius church in Ename and its role in the Francia Media heritage initiative

Virtual Reality and multimedia technologies are central components of the heritage presentation programme at Ename, Belgium. These techniques are designed to help the visitor understand and experience the past as it has been revealed through archaeological and historical research. This paper briefly traces the development of multimedia and Virtual Reality technologies in presenting the archaeological site of the early medieval fortress and St. Salvator Abbey at Ename and in the archaeological exhibits in the Ename Provincial Museum. It then highlights the approach used in Ename to present the 10^th-century Saint-Laurentius Church and its restoration to the public, describing the methodology of creating scientifically verifiable Virtual Reality reconstructions. In conclusion it will place this project in the context of an international heritage initiative, the Francia Media Project, in which new interpretive technologies will be developed by members of a scientific consortium to offer new media of public heritage presentation in a European context.