PUDUCHERRY: A mobile application containing the historical places in Puducherry was launched by Consul General of France Catherine Suard at French Institute of Pondicherry on Friday.
The bilingual application in English and French and named Pondicherry past and present has been developed by French Institute of Pondicherry. It is dedicated to discovery of historical sites of Puducherry and presents nearly 94 such heritage sites. The history of the sites and buildings along with the present and past images over the years and the location of the site is available in the application.
The GPS enabled location will facilitate on-field navigation by users as per their interest of tourists, visitors and locals as well. The application was derived from a detailed and complete research by Jean Deloche, a renowned researcher from Puducherry who had published a bilingual DVD on Pondicherry Past and present as part of The French school of Asian Studies and the French Institute.
The application is android based at present and can be downloaded from play store. Subsequently, it will be developed in other platforms. Besides the application would also be developed in Tamil and Hindi.
Launching the application Catherine Suard said that the app underlines the history. The user-friendly app is a tool which will add value to the tourism in Puducherry and help preserving its heritage smartly. Not only tourists even Puducherry residents who are lovers of heritage can take their children to visit these places. Heritage is a part of the key to future and cannot be ignored. It need not be only seen in museums, but be a tool for developing something new and make it an asset, she said.
The French consulate is keen to support Puducherry and is already part of the Smart city project in developing Puducherry in a sustainable way.
Raphael Mathew, Head, Ecology department, gave an overview on the activities of the French Institute and Jean Delouche on how he had gathered materials and photographs for compiling the DVD.