There are some travel experiences that unfold gently, offering sun-drenched vineyards or serene museums with discreet placards and polite audio guides. And then there are those that throw you into the shadows of a city’s past, daring you to rearrange the truth with your own two hands. This autumn, Paris will host one such adventure, though “adventure” may be too gentle a word.
At the heart of it is a mystery. A real one. One that has danced on the margins of history books for centuries: the tale of the Queen’s lost diamonds. It’s a story dense with scandal, conspiracy, and the unsettling suggestion that the truth has been deliberately misplaced.
Enter Ariodante, a travel company not known for package holidays or glossy brochures. What they create are better described as narrative odysseys, ephemeral, extravagant, and entirely bespoke. This time, however, even their own rules have been rewritten.
The Queen’s Lost Diamonds is not a tour, nor is it quite theatre. It is, if anything, an existential puzzle masquerading as a game, played across three intense days in Paris. The city becomes both setting and co-conspirator. Those who take part will not observe history, they’ll interfere with it.
Little is publicly known. And that, of course, is the point. Applicants are vetted and signed into silence. There are no tickets on sale, no press junkets. Instead, a handful of participants will follow a trail through hidden manuscripts, locked rooms, and secret conversations with characters who may or may not be who they seem. It’s immersive theatre for those who prefer their art laced with paranoia.
The man behind it all is Ricardo Araujo, who refers to himself, only half-jokingly, as a “travel alchemist.” He talks about the experience less like a game and more like a living organism, something that breathes, shifts, and resists control. His inspirations draw from both film and history, but this isn’t escapism. If anything, it’s the opposite. The Queen’s Lost Diamonds is a confrontation, with the past, with truth, and, more intimately, with oneself.
This is not for the faint-hearted. Players will face dilemmas designed to test their ethics, their endurance, and their ability to separate fact from finely crafted fiction. And that fiction runs deep, threaded through the bones of Paris itself. One minute, you’re holding a centuries-old document. The next, you’re wondering whether your fellow investigator is actually working against you.
It is, by design, the kind of journey that cannot be repeated. The story adapts. The outcome changes. And those who emerge on the other side will likely carry more than just memories. They’ll carry questions. Perhaps even doubts.
For a city so well-documented, Paris still holds secrets. Ariodante simply invites a chosen few to come looking. And if the diamonds are never truly found? That might be the point.
After all, not every journey needs a resolution. Some simply need to be lived.
