About Red Thread

For people who want
to understand,
not just see.

The pitch for Red Thread happened on Boracay, Philippines. No conference, no meeting room – a video call on the beach and a few scribbled ideas. Just under a year and 15 countries later the app went live. That pretty much says everything about who we are.

Our Story
Why we built this

Split, 2021.
The guide had other priorities.

I wanted to understand Diocletian's Palace – what drove an emperor to settle here, what of that is still visible today. My guide had other priorities: a lengthy, not always balanced analysis of Croatian domestic politics. What really struck me: that was actually the more interesting story. But I would never have found it on my own. Split's political present and how it manifests in the cityscape as a red thread for urban exploration – nothing like that existed.

The concept of the free walking tour has its charm – but the experience is unpredictable. Quality and topic depend entirely on the guide. And in the end, a "free" tour is rarely truly free. We all know this. We wanted to break with it.

Ever since that day in Split, whenever I watched a sociology documentary on Arte, a DW report on sustainable infrastructure, or listened to a podcast about urban subcultures, I thought: this is so fascinating – I want to experience this on location! Every little red thread that explains a city is so much more interesting than the standard tour of the usual sights. And if you bring your own thread, you should be able to turn it into a tour.

The idea was born. Now we had to build it.

The idea behind it

"A blend of documentary, podcast, and walking tour – on topics that truly interest you. Not just what tourism boards consider mass-market enough. But the stories too small for the mainstream – and precisely because of that, the more interesting ones."

C

Christian

Co-Founder, Red Thread

Who's behind Red Thread

The Team.

Three founders, three disciplines – brought together by the shared belief that travel and discovering home can go deeper.

Christian

Christian

Data & Experience

10+ years in data science and AI. 50+ countries visited. As a part-time tourist and amateur explorer, he knows and analyses the needs and desires of travellers firsthand.

John

John

Product & Development

Ad-Tech-Expert with many years of experience in digital product development. Passionate about modern app development, software architecture, and artificial intelligence, he transforms ideas into products and ensures that new features reach the user quickly.

Ole

Ole

User Journey & Marketing

Designs the frontend of Red Thread from the user's perspective – and with his 15 years of experience as a marketer, he ensures that the stories we surface reach the people looking for them – even when they don't know it yet.

1,200
Code Commits
15
Countries we coded from
300+
Manually reviewed tours
1,500+
Tours worldwide
Three moments that explain Red Thread

Why the idea really works.

Mongolia 01

Ulaanbaatar — The mosaic that brought it all together

Christian walked the very first Red Thread tour ever – about the social challenges of Mongolia and their root causes. The final stop: the Zaisan Memorial, high above Ulaanbaatar. Below him lay the city he had just explored piece by piece. The tour brought everything together – and suddenly all the mosaic pieces formed a picture, just like the memorial's mosaic itself. Goosebumps. Not just because of the city – but because it became clear that the idea behind this app really works.

Germany 02

Hamburg — Ole's home city

Ole has worked in Hamburg for 15 years. Went out partying on the Reeperbahn countless times. He'd walked down the 'Große Freiheit' (great freedom) dozens of times, passing the church next to the Thai-Oase Karaoke Bar without ever thinking much about it. Until he learned why the street has that name: until 1938, it wasn't part of Hamburg at all – it was a legal exception zone under Danish rule, where craftsmen worked without guild restrictions and religious minorities could live freely. The church, wedged right between the clubs, is a quiet remnant of that. He'd never questioned the name.

Italy 03

Venice — Flooded

John stood on the Rialto Bridge. Around him: thousands of tourists, all taking the same photo. He had the feeling of visiting Venice without actually seeing Venice. So he built a tour about the MOSE project – Venice's decades-long flood barrier system, plagued by corruption scandals. Suddenly he saw the same alleys differently. Not as a backdrop, but as a city fighting for its survival. The same Venice – but now with a deeply moving story beneath it.

How our tours are made

We use AI – but the starting point
is always human curiosity.

01

We find the hook

A local contradiction, a forgotten fact, a story too big for a guidebook and too small for a museum. We research these anchor points and select them ourselves.

02

AI researches in depth

Based on these hooks, our AI searches archives, local media, academic sources, and travel reports – connecting places into a coherent narrative rather than a list of POIs.

03

Quality in multiple layers

Every tour goes through automated fact-checks. Hundreds of tours in our catalogue are additionally reviewed manually for accuracy, quality, and coherence. We founders have walked dozens of finished tours across many countries ourselves. And we actively work with our community to incorporate feedback as quickly as possible.

04

You write your own thread

With the AI tour creator, you build your personal tour from any starting point – on exactly the topics that genuinely interest you. One hook is enough.

Who Red Thread is not for

Red Thread is not for travellers who want to tick a city off a list.

If you stop briefly at every monument, take a photo, and move on – there are better apps for that. We might lead you into an unremarkable backyard, to a small memorial plaque, into a neighbourhood supermarket – because they're an integral part of a larger story. And the stories are what matter to us when it comes to understanding a city.

If that bothers you, that's okay.
If it fascinates you, you're exactly in the right place.

Honest about our approach

What AI can do for us – and what it can't.

Every tour goes through automated checks and fact-verification – but even these can occasionally fail. Particularly for tours assembled on demand around the clock, manual review is technically not possible.

We therefore strive to manually review all tours in our public catalogue and incorporate user feedback as quickly as possible. Our goal is the highest possible accuracy – not a promise of perfection. If you find an error, write to us. We take it seriously.

contact@voltaire.vision
The circle closes

Split, 2026.
With a different app in hand.

Same city. Five years later. I'm back in Split – this time on a workation. On the beach, I catch a word I don't know: Picigin. Someone mentions it in passing, about a stretch of beach, about a few guys standing in shallow water.

A perfect hook. I open Red Thread, type it in – and get a tour I didn't expect: how students in 1920s Split, lacking any deep water, simply invented their own beach sport on the spot. How that sport is inseparably woven into the Dalmatian philosophy of fjaka – a deep ease that isn't laziness, but a way of being. How the sea in Split has simultaneously been workplace, food source, meeting place, and stage for centuries – and how all of that is mirrored in a single ball game played in knee-deep water.

In 2021, I got a tour in Split I hadn't booked – and wished I could have simply chosen my own. In 2026, that's exactly what I did.

That's Red Thread. Not the city someone else curated for you. But the city you discover yourself – along the thread that actually interests you.

Ready to find your
red thread?

Over 1,500 tours are waiting. Or build your own in 30 minutes.

Download on the App Store
★★★★★ 5.0 App Store