The paper presents the Heritour project, an integrated framework combining artificial intelligence, sensor-based monitoring, and extended reality technologies for the management and promotion of cultural heritage. The approach focuses on the development of a predictive monitoring system based on machine learning algorithms, capable of processing data collected through IoT sensors and integrated surveys to assess structural conditions and potential risks. At the same time, the project leverages XR technologies (VR/AR) to enhance dissemination, enabling immersive and interactive exploration of heritage sites. The workflow integrates data acquisition, processing, and management within a multi-layered digital infrastructure, supporting both decision-making processes and public engagement through semantic 3D models and digital platforms.
Cultural Sprawl: The Opportunities of AR for Museum Communication
This paper explores how Augmented Reality can extend museum communication beyond institutional walls by connecting cultural collections with urban public space. Developed through a collaboration between the Museo Egizio of Turin and Politecnico di Torino, the project proposes a mobile AR application centered on the funerary assemblage of Kha and Merit. Users engage with interactive storytelling and gamified experiences distributed across key locations in Turin, where digital avatars and reconstructed artefacts appear in real environments through AR. The app combines 3D modelling, animation, educational narratives, and location-based interaction to create new relationships between museum objects, city landmarks, and visitors. Through playful tasks involving the senet game, the Book of the Dead, Merit’s toiletries, and a final X-ray preview of the museum galleries, the system encourages users to visit the museum while learning about ancient Egyptian life and beliefs. The research demonstrates AR’s potential to transform museums into distributed cultural ecosystems accessible before, during, and beyond the physical visit.
AR and Knowledge Dissemination: the Case of the Museo Egizio
In the context of the growing pivotal role of digitalization for cultural institutions, the digital transition of the Museo Egizio di Torino is centered on the integration of heterogeneous information and data to implement the management, dissemination, and promotion of the Museum’s collection. This digital transition is intended not only as a mere acquisition of technological tools but rather as the construction of an integrated system that facilitates dialogue and connections between all museum activities, from daily management to research, from the design of installations to the generation of multiple possible narratives. Within this framework, the essay illustrates, through two empirical case studies, the opportunities of AR technologies to implement the knowledge and dissemination of tangible and intangible aspects of the millennial historical objects preserved in the Museum.
Re-contextualizing the standing Sekhmet statues in the Temple of Ptah at Karnak through digital reconstruction and VR experience
Recent trends in the Digital Humanities – conceived as new modalities of collaborative, transdisciplinary and computational research and presentation – also strongly influence research approaches and presentation practices in museums. Indeed, ongoing projects in museums have considerably expanded digital access to data and information, documentation and visualization of ancient ruins and objects. In addition, 3D modelling and eXtended Reality opened up new avenues of interacting with a wider public through digital reconstructions that allow both objects and sites to be presented through visual narratives based on multidisciplinary scholarly research. The article illustrates the use of 3D digital reconstruction and virtual reality to re-contextualise standing statues of Sekhmet in the Temple of Ptah at Karnak, where they were found in 1818. Today, they are on display at Museo Egizio, Turin. The theoretical framework of the research and the operational workflow – based on the study of the available archaeological, textual, and pictorial data – is presented here.