You can reach Temple C of Selinunte wondering why the ancient and rich city was abandoned, or walk in the Valley of the Temples up to the Temple of Concordia, marveling at its grandeur and trying to imagine what ancient Akragas must have been like. You will enter the museum where the Dancing Satyr is kept in Mazara del Vallo and you will be able to observe it up close, studying its elegant forms, its muscles, its eyes seized by inebriation. A virtual journey that anyone can take: just choose your Avatar by skin, age, style, gender – look around carefully and discover a heritage from the base of the columns, get up to see the capitals of the columns up close, fly over 40 hectares of the Archaeological Park of Selinunte, the largest in Europe – and look into the eyes of the Satyr of Mazara from a few centimeters away.
The first limelight will be there Bit – the International Tourism Exchange -, at Fieramilano: from Sunday 12 to Tuesday 14 Februarytourism and cultural operators, potential tourists, journalists, students and the public will be able to discover the world of Metaverse applied to Sicilian cultural and tourist heritage. The project is an example of virtuous collaboration between the two cornerstones of the Sicilian government: the ‘Department of Tourism, Sport and Entertainment’, the ‘Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity’ and the world of universities and research.
The most advanced digitalisation and three-dimensional graphics techniques available today have been adopted, arriving in Europe from the Balkans and in particular from the Science and Technology Laboratory (Stl) of theGorazde International University, of which Marcello Conigliaro is Pro-Rector for research: it was he who developed, at the end of the 1990s, when he was teaching at the University of Palermo, (among the very first in Italy and in Europe) static heritage interview systems in augmented reality (Ar) and the first civil system in Ar, ubiquitous and mobile with the first georeferenced video-guide in Ar and to suggest to the technicians of the then Regional Department of BBs. Cc. to adopt these systems for the use of the cultural heritage at the newly established Archaeological and Landscape Park of the Valley of the Temples. More than twenty years have passed and today’s experiment has arrived, which opens up exciting scenarios for the travelers and scholars of the future.
It is a decisive step towards the digitization of Sicily’s entire cultural and tourist heritage: here too a virtuous approach which sees archaeologists, architects, curators, ready to work closely with computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, economists and tourism operators to break down the barriers between classical and scientific culture for the benefit of society and progress.
Starting with the monuments and archaeological finds, whose details, shapes, geometries, construction techniques, materials, landscapes will become eternal to continue, over time, with the immense heritage of intangible cultures typical of anthropological knowledge: uses, customs, dances, rites, liturgies of which Sicily is rich.