Cities written to be listened to
The city speaks.
Listen.
You walk. The story of the place starts by itself in your earphones. You stop for a coffee, and it waits for you. Saint-Malo is open today, forty-eight more cities are being built.
Every city keeps stories that only its *stones* remember. We spend months digging them out, cross-checking them, writing them down. Then we *whisper* them in your ear, at the exact moment you walk past.
The idea
A story in your ear.
Nobody ahead of you.
On one side the story, researched and written like a book. On the other, the freedom to go when it suits you, to stop, to turn back. Those two things do not usually come together. Murmures puts them in the same app.
01 · Download
Start by
looking around.
The app is free. You download it, create an account, and the map opens: the places we tell are there, so is the tone of the walk, and one place is given to you so you can hear what it sounds like before paying anything at all.
The day you want the whole walk, you unlock the city from the app. Every city sets its own price, shown before you confirm. If you scanned the QR code of a hotel, a campsite or a tourist office, the discount is already taken off.
- One place is yours, before you pay a penny
- Unlock the night before, or at the foot of the ramparts
02 · Walk
You walk.
The city opens up.
No map to unfold, no number to key in. The app knows where you are, and as you reach a place, the story starts. A siege, a shipwreck, a neighbourhood rumour, told on the exact spot where it happened.
Before you set off it asks you two things: how you are getting around, and how long you have. Then a third, which changes everything: which thread you want to follow. In Saint-Malo, the same day does not tell the same city depending on whether you follow the corsairs or the shipwrecks.
- The route is rebuilt around the time you give it, from ninety minutes to a full day
- Everything sits on the phone: the signal can drop, the walk carries on
- Wander off the route? The app follows you, it does not call you back into line
La Grand’Porte
Now telling · 2 min 40
03 · Ask
A question?
Ask the city.
“Why is there a cannonball in that wall?” It is the kind of question that comes up in front of a façade, that you keep to yourself for want of anyone to ask, and that you have forgotten by the evening. Here you ask it, and the answer arrives within seconds.
It does not come out of a general encyclopaedia. Every city has its own body of research, the one used to write the stories, and the answers come from there. The app also knows which place you are standing in front of, which changes the quality of what it tells you a great deal. Ask as many as you like, it is part of the walk.
04 · Share
Together, in step.
And for good.
As a couple, a family or a group of friends: the sound locks onto every phone in the group, to the second. Everyone with their own earphones, everyone in the same sentence, and nobody trailing three streets behind asking the others to wait.
When the walk ends, the app writes the story of your day: the places you went through, the questions you asked, what held you longer than you expected. It stays in your account.
- Up to six devices on the same soundtrack
- Under-12s get their own version of the stories, in seven languages
- The journal of the walk is kept in your account
In practice
From install
to the first story.
Download the app
On iOS and Android. Create your account in thirty seconds, and the city map opens.
Choose your city
Every city is written for itself alone, never copied from another. Saint-Malo is open, four cities are being walked in testing, nineteen are written and under study, twenty-five are being scouted.
Unlock your walk
Two options for the same walk: Escapade for two, Odyssée for up to six. The price depends on the city and is shown before payment. The walk then stays open for 96 hours, and you decide when the countdown starts. Got a partner code? Your discount is applied right here.
Walk, and listen
Put the phone back in your pocket. The city speaks when you reach the right spot, signal or not.
Escapade for two · Odyssée for six
What it actually sounds like.
On the rue de la Herse, a wall still carries a cannonball. You walk past, the question comes to you, you ask it. Here is the exchange, word for word.
“Why is there a cannonball in that wall?”
“A souvenir of the English bombardment of 1693: several façades in Saint-Malo still carry the scars…”
Cities to explore
Every city
has its whispers.
We open a city when it is ready, not when the calendar says so. Each one takes months of archives, writing and walking on site. Saint-Malo is open. Cancale, Annecy, Nantes and Lisbon are being walked in testing. Nineteen more are written and waiting their turn, twenty-five are being scouted across Europe. The map says where each one stands, without rounding up.
Our standard
Substance before effect.
A handsome app is not enough. What you listen to has been dug up, written, cross-checked, then verified on the pavement where it starts. That is our side of the bargain.
Written by authors
A place is not a factsheet to be recited. It has characters, a plot, sometimes a grudge that runs on for two centuries. That is how it gets written here.
Historically sourced
Every fact is cross-checked against two or three agreeing sources. And when the local legend contradicts the archive, we tell you both, and we say which is which.
Translated, not run through a machine
A story translated in a hurry loses its wordplay and its street names. Ours are taken up language by language, as many as seven for a single city, with a separate version for under-12s.
Start here
Your first walk
starts here.
Murmures is coming very soon to iOS and Android. Leave us your address and you will be among the first to hear our cities, starting with Saint-Malo.