ABOUT STENDROME
What is Stendhal's Syndrome?
Stendhal's syndrome, sometimes also known as Florence syndrome, is a psychosomatic condition involving rapid heartbeat, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations, allegedly occurring when individuals become exposed to objects, artworks, or phenomena of great beauty and antiquity.
This affliction is named after the 19th-century French author, who described his experience with the phenomenon during his 1817 visit to Florence in his book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio. When he visited the Basilica of Santa Croce, where Niccolò Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Galileo Galilei are buried, he was overcome with profound emotion.
Stendhal wrote:
"I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty ... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations ... Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves'. Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling."
Why Stendhal's Syndrome?
The main goal of Stendrome is to get the player to experience the first exhilarating stages of Stendhal's Syndrome through immense, breath-taking architecture and overwhelming beauty, without its negative effects. Stendrome is made of three parts which represent life, death and birth, each divided in a calm "filler" and an overwhelming "capital", in which the player will experience what we like to call the "wow" effect.