A Historic Graveyard in Slovenia Is Now Home to a Digital Tombstone

A historic graveyard in Slovenia has joined the tech revolution. As Reuters reports, Cemetery Pobrežje—located in the nation’s second-largest city of Maribor—is now home to what cemetery officials bill as the world’s first digital interactive tombstone.

Created by Slovenian company Bioenergija, the tombstone has a 48-inch interactive screen. When visitors aren’t around, the screen simply shows the deceased’s name, and birth and death dates. Sensors are activated when someone stands in front of the stone, prompting it to flicker to life.

When the digital tombstone is "awake," it’s capable of displaying pictures, video, and other types of digital odes to the deceased. Designers also plan on making a smartphone app, so visitors can stream audio to their personal devices. As for practical concerns, the headstone is said to be both weatherproof and vandal-proof, making it a low-maintenance grave marker (although Bioenergija still hasn't addressed if it's vulnerable to hackers).

"This tombstone makes it possible to put anything next to the deceased person's name and surname,” Milan Zorman, a computer scientist who helped create the tombstone, told Express.co.uk. “You can write an entire novel if you like.”

The tombstone in Cemetery Pobrežje is only a prototype, but Bioenergija head Saso Radovanovic told Reuters that they’ve already received a few orders. As might be expected, their digital tombstones aren’t cheap: They cost around $3200, on par with a high-end laptop. While these new tombstones may be the first of their kind, it isn't the first time gravestones have gone tech: QR codes on graves have been providing digital memorials for the past few years.

Watch how the digital tombstones work in the videos below: