Virtual immersion is a technological advancement, which acquired even greater importance in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. During the difficult lockdown period, the first Virtual Museum of Cultural Heritage was created, with the promotion by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Italian Ministry of Culture.
Convinced that digital language can be one of the tools to promote the importance of cultural heritage and provide an additional possibility for its preservation, the Virtual Museum on Cultural Heritage offers an example of digital interpretative exegesis of cultural heritage, combining three different digitization models (360° digitization - digital animation 2.D - interactive 3D virtual reality) that clearly show the advantages of digitization in the cultural sector.
The Virtual Museum was established with the goal of increasing the general awareness on the importance to start from our history and our common cultural roots to deal with the complex challenges of the present. It is a message made more urgent than ever, in view of the collapse of so many of our certainties caused by the pandemic, but also thinking of the current armed conflicts, where sometimes the destruction of a country’s heritage becomes the means to cancel the cultural identity of an entire population.
The Virtual Museum on Cultural Heritage counts on a Steering Committee composed of the Curator of the Museum, representatives of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Italian Ministry of Culture, representative of UNESCO and Professors in Archaeology, History of Arts, and Anthropology.
The Steering Committee is in charge to identify the scientific line of the digitalization and to ensure coherence and academic solidity to the work of the Art Director. The Committee is developing the Museum as an integral part of Italy’s foreign cultural policy and a unique good practice at the international level, also with the aim of creating a transnational network for sharing cultural heritage.
The Steering Committee is also in charge of taking care of the captions of the virtual rooms, the publications, the brochures, the catalogues and any material of scientific relevance in connection with the Museum. The members of the Committee are also committed to organize international events in initiatives, conferences, and seminars.
The Virtual Museum on Cultural Heritage uses digital art to disseminate the value cultural heritage as widely and quickly as possible and allow both the general public and professionals to discover new perspectives on this heritage. The Museum aims at creating a transnational network for sharing cultural heritage, as a bridge between cultures, in particular by developing bilateral and multilateral interconnections between countries all over the world. The Virtual Museum aims also art encouraging respect for and protection of cultural heritage at all times and under all circumstances, especially in times of war, through the creation of new virtual rooms specifically designed to stimulate the prevention of armed attacks and reconstruction. An important objective is also to stimulate an alternative, parallel and sustainable form of tourism, by allowing people to admire the sites in a more attentive way through an innovative and individual experience and encouraging access for everyone to cultural heritage, guaranteeing the enjoyment of human rights, particularly cultural rights.
The Virtual Museum on Cultural Heritage continues to enjoy an international appreciation never before recorded by digital exhibitions. Following the latest stops of the Museum in Canada (2022) and Egypt (2023), the new virtual rooms about cultural heritage in Ravenna, Bologna, Modena, Ferrara were inaugurated in the occasion of the III Symposium on Cultural Heritage (Forli’, January 2024). Cultural heritage in Rome, Venice, Florence, and Benevento is also integral part of the Virtual Museum.
Thanks to the success of the Virtual Museum on Cultural Heritage, Italy has taken the lead in the digitisation of the museum and cultural sector in Egypt, by digitised the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation for the first time in history, both in 360 degrees and in a 3D planimetric model, with a special virtual focus on some unique exhibits, including the skeleton of Nazlet Khater and the mummies of Amenhotep II and Ramesses II. The Museum of Antiquities and all the Museums within the Library of Alexandria have also been digitised as well as the Egyptian Museum.
The Museum was the focus of a major international Volume with Springer publisher aimed at highlighting how digital art represents one of the significant tools to promote the importance of cultural heritage in a broad sense: from the classical form of cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, to food, nature, urban landscapes, both in peace and in times of war. The Museum is taken by the Volume as a symbol for developing new legal instruments for the protection, conservation and promotion of heritage, both nationally and internationally.
