Hello, and welcome to the first issue of Pastpic Monthly. This has been the busiest stretch since we started: the app went from a single-island pilot to ten live cities across three countries, gained a fully automated daily feature, and got a proper home online. Here's what's new.
In the app
✨ Photo of the Day — and it runs itself, every day, forever
Every city now gets a new hero photograph automatically, every single day of the year. Our AI analyses each city's full archive, picks a genuinely great photograph, colourises it, and rebuilds it as a walk-into 3D scene — with no one at the controls. By rotating through five different photographic eras, one day you might see 1850s Funchal, the next 1920s Paris.
It's not a gimmick bolted onto the map, either — click through and Photo of the Day opens the exact same interactive experience as our hand-picked Wow Gallery photos: walk into it in 3D, or stand on the very spot with your camera. Look out for the gold "Photo of the Day" card next time you open any city, or on the pastpic.com homepage, where it rotates through whichever city's pick is featured that day.
🚶 Self-guided walking tours
Curated routes through the areas of real historic interest in each city — market squares, old fishing quarters, fortress walls — narrated stop by stop, entirely self-paced and free. Sponsors can also get a bespoke tour built around their own property, starting and ending right at their reception.
📍 Improved "stand on the spot" navigation, with proximity alerts
Pastpic can now alert you the moment you're within 25 metres of a historic photo location, and guide you straight to it if you'd like. Navigation and the live-camera overlay are noticeably smoother too.
🌍 Search in your own language
Search now works across places, people, events and years — in your own language: Portuguese, English, German, French or Spanish.
🛡️ A feedback link on every photo
See something wrong — a location, a date, a detail? Every photograph now has a direct feedback link, and we aim to resolve any reported issue within three working days. Keeping the archive accurate is what keeps Pastpic worth trusting, and now anyone can help us do it.
Growing footprint
🗺️ Now live in ten cities, across three countries
Since Madeira, Pastpic has gone live in Guimarães, and across France — Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Avignon, Marseille and Toulouse — and, in our first step beyond Portugal and France, Warsaw and Kraków in Poland. Ten cities, three countries, and growing. A new EU hub map makes it easy to jump between all of them from one place.
◆ Real Victorian 3D — no glasses required
Some 19th-century photographers shot in stereo pairs — two lenses, side by side, for a genuine 3D effect. Pastpic now automatically detects these in an archive and turns them into real, moving 3D animations: authentic period depth, not an AI approximation.
🏠 A proper home online
You're reading this on it: pastpic.com now has a real marketing site of its own, with a clear pitch for archives, museums, tourist boards and sponsors, and a live Photo of the Day rotating right on the homepage.
For sponsors & partners
🔗 Virtual Visit link generator — for sponsor & partner previews
For sponsors, partners, and limited-time trials, we can now generate a QR code that drops a visitor straight into your reception area's photo history — no app, no download. Include it in a visitor information pack and let people start exploring right from where they're standing. Get in touch for details of how this works and how we can help.
📊 Monthly usage reports for sponsors
Sponsors now get detailed monthly reports: visitor numbers at their location, and how many bespoke walking tours tailored to their property were completed. It's the same data our own back-office already tracks to run the platform — provided to you in a monthly report, giving you detailed activity data in support of your investment.
“Scan to start exploring. Free. Nothing to download or install, no sign-up required, no cookies, no annoying ads. Ever.”
“Stand where history happened.” Navigate to the spot, point your phone's camera, and watch the view slip back 50, 100, even 160 years.
That's issue #1. Next month: a first look at the "Wow Gallery bucket" — how every Photo of the Day pick quietly builds up a browsable library we can promote the best of into each city's permanent showcase — plus whatever else the next four weeks bring.