A series of virtual strolls in discovery of places of culture and film and television locations in the city of Trieste and Fiuli-Venezia Giulia more broadly. That is what is being proposed by the Casa del cinema di Trieste association through its Esterno/Giorno project which, with the help of film critics, organises guided tours through the streets, piazzas, monuments and corners of the city, following in the footsteps of the films and TV series filmed there. Visitors can explore the locations used in TV series La porta rossa, and Gabriele Salvatores’ film The Invisible Boy, the first teenage superhero in Italian film, as well as the Trieste made famous through film or by the Great War. Or you can follow in the footsteps of Commissario Laurenti, the protagonist of the crime novels by German writer Veit Heinichen. All of these works were set in the Friulian capital. Some of the locations are closed off to the public, but can be explored using special visors, which allow for 360° immersion in the locations concerned and introduce users to the scenes filmed in those place, with the voices of the characters and anecdotes and fun facts.
The cultural sector often makes use of virtual and augmented realityto promote the artistic, historical and architectural heritage of our country using alternative means. For example, at the ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan, visitors can explore the Enrico Toti S 506, the first submarine built in Italy after the Second World War, which was launched in 1967 and was operational until the end of the 1990s. In 2015 the Museum released a free virtual reality App that allows users to explore the submarine first-hand in two modes: in the more traditional way, with an interactive guided tour entitled ‘explore the boat’, and a more adventurous option entitled ‘rapid immersion – adventure aboard’ which sees the user involved in a mission in the Mediterranean in 1990. Then there’s the augmented reality game App commissioned by the Municipality of Alghero, which allows users to enrich their visit to the Nuragic village of Palmavera through dialogues with the ghosts of the last inhabitants on the day of the fire that destroyed the village, and by doing things for them. All of this has an educational purpose, to promote the history of one of the most ancient civilisations in Italy.