Review: Cleopatra - The Experience

Photo: Cleopatra: The Experience

The life of Cleopatra VII, the final ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, has been mythologised and misrepresented more than most. She was said to be an astute leader who helped Egypt prosper during her reign, yet the narratives surrounding her in the aftermath of her death - largely at the hands of the Romans - recast her as something of a self-serving femme fatale willing to do anything to secure power. This portrayal was cemented by Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and later reinforced by the 1963 epic Cleopatra, which further entrenched the image of her as a seductress. Over time, the truth of Cleopatra's life has become so tangled up with the myths that people’s perception of her sits somewhere in between.

Now, some 2,000 years on from her death, the large-scale immersive exhibition Cleopatra: The Experience, which runs at Immerse LDN until 12th July 2026, attempts to explore both sides of Egypt's last Queen using a mix of 360-degree immersive projections, virtual reality, interactive screens and holograms alongside limited museum-like displays.

The show's producers, Madrid Artes Digitales, have maintained a near-constant presence in London over the past year, having previously launched exhibitions on the Titanic, Tutankhamun and the destruction of Pompeii in quick succession. The company's approach to creating immersive exhibitions has clearly borne fruit, with several of them currently running across multiple locations around Europe alongside Cleopatra's London residency. Their success in the UK has proven that there's a real appetite for the kind of large-scale, tech-driven, educational experiences that aren't possible in traditional museum environments.

Photo: Cleopatra: The Experience

Cleopatra: The Experience's opening space features a large 'hologram' sequence charting the rise and fall of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Flying through nearly 300 years of royal lineage at a pace, the sequence moves from Ptolemy I through to Ptolemy XII with barely a second's thought before arriving at Cleopatra herself, first depicted as a child and then transitioning into adulthood.

Acting as an introduction to the experience, this sequence provides a brief overview of the key moments in Cleopatra's life, from her strategic and romantic relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony through to her defeat in the Battle of Actium and sets the stage for the topics the exhibition explores in the following rooms.

From there, it's straight into the exhibition's engaging, if slightly abstract, 'metaverse' experience, which lets visitors step inside a selection of Cleopatra's memories through virtual reality. Within this free-roaming section, guests walk through virtual recreations of Alexandria's catacombs as a funeral takes place before travelling back even further in time to the Temple of Amun in the remote settlement of Siwa Oasis.

Later, they witness both Alexander the Great's crowning as a pharaoh and Mark Antony inside his military tent during the Battle of Actium up close, alongside a vertigo-inducing sequence in which guests carefully tread on a floating stone pathway through the infinite void of space. The closing scene takes place on the balcony of Cleopatra's royal quarters, as she looks out over the city and ponders what awaits her.

Photo: Cleopatra: The Experience

Further into the exhibition, wall-mounted displays explore Cleopatra's relationships with Caesar and Antony, her association with the goddess Isis, and her portrayal in media and literature. Additional wall mounts further on in the exhibition interrogate a lot of the myths surrounding Cleopatra, from claims of her 'incomparable' beauty to rumours of bathing in donkey's milk and the widely repeated account of her death by cobra bite.

While everything written on the dozen or so wall mounts throughout the exhibition is informative, more often than not, the wall mounts stand in isolation, with no artefacts, additional material or visual elements accompanying them.

Photo: Cleopatra: The Experience

The entirety of Cleopatra: The Experience's archaeological artefacts (a selection of 20+ items, including small bronze statues, glass mosaic fragments and wooden coffin masks) are confined to a single glass display case at the end of a long, largely empty room, which sadly leaves them feeling like an afterthought and not a prominent part of the exhibition.

It's an unexpected shift in focus, given Madrid Artes Digitales' track record of including several rooms' worth of artefacts and replicas alongside the immersive and interactive elements in previous exhibitions, and it means a lot of the available space in Cleopatra: The Experience's non-immersive rooms are void of anything meaningful to engage with besides the wall-mounted text.

Photo: Cleopatra: The Experience

The final exhibition space ahead of the 360° immersive room has been designed to resemble Cleopatra's private chambers and contains an interactive map of Alexandria; several screens designed to look like mirrors, which detail the meaning behind individual elements of her crown, as well as her make-up, hairstyles, and perfume choices; and a three-metre-wide projection recreating the view from Cleopatra's balcony overlooking the Bay of Alexandria.

The exhibition's centrepiece is the 360° projection room, which lies behind a curtain at the far end of Cleopatra's private chambers. In contrast to some of the small trinkets on display earlier in the exhibition, everything in this space is writ large. Standing 8 metres tall, the four walls and floor of the space display an ever-changing series of Instagram-worthy, cinematic animations on a 26-minute loop. Much like in MAD's previous exhibitions, the immersive projection room is by far the most impressive part of Cleopatra: The Experience and is the space visitors will likely spend most of their visit in.

Broken up into ten chapters, the projections cover most of the ground depicted in the exhibition’s previous rooms and show everything from Cleopatra’s coronation in a lush waterfront location through to her first encounters with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony and her eventual suicide after the Battle of Actium.

While our personal highlights were the two scenes which depict Caesar addressing the Senate ahead of being assassinated and the deadly waters on which the Battle of Actium was fought, we'd recommend staying in the space for a complete loop to get the full experience. The scale of the room's visuals is pretty stunning and truly engulfs your entire vision if you're sitting in the centre of the space.

Photo: Cleopatra: The Experience

The exhibition’s final room contains the second of Cleopatra's two virtual reality sequences. With visitors wearing headsets while seated on swivel chairs, they're free to look around as they witness the earthquake and flood that submerged Alexandria under water, the modern-day search for the city’s ruins, and the ritual in which Cleopatra is laid to rest inside the Temple of Isis.

Those scared of snakes and spiders would do well to potentially skip this section, as they both get an extended period in the spotlight, but it’s otherwise a fairly subdued conclusion to the experience, which ends with the lid of Cleopatra's tomb being sealed shut.

While this section stands up pretty well against the seated VR sections on offer at MAD’s previous exhibitions, the exhibition's reordering of its usual elements (metaverse sequence, VR sequence, immersive projection room, etc.) makes the poor resolution of these VR headsets feel even worse than normal following the supersized, high-resolution visuals of the 360° projection room that preceded it.

Photo: Cleopatra: The Experience

With Cleopatra: The Experience, Madrid Artes Digitales has once again delivered the kind of exhibition that's simply not possible in a traditional museum setting. Anchored by a striking 360° centrepiece and engaging metaverse experience, the exhibition offers visitors an engaging and unique way to learn about history, even if the museum-like staples that usually complement these high-tech moments are largely absent this time around.

★★★

[Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review]

Book tickets to Cleopatra: The Experience here

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Cleopatra: The Experience runs at Immerse LDN near Customs House station until 12th July 2026. Tickets are priced from £25.00 for adults and £20.00 for children. To find out more and book tickets, visit feverup.com