Today, the practice of making digital replicas of artworks and restoring and recontextualizing them within artificial simulations is widespread in the virtual heritage domain. Virtual reconstructions have achieved results of great realistic and aesthetic impact. Alongside the practice, a growing methodological awareness has developed of the extent to which, and how, it is permissible to virtually operate in the field of restoration, avoid a false sense of reality, and preserve the reliability of the original content. However, there is not yet a full sharing of meanings in virtual restoration and reconstruction domains. Therefore, this article aims to clarify and define concepts, functions, fields of application, and methodologies. The goal of virtual heritage is not only producing digital replicas. In the absence of materiality, what emerges as a fundamental value are the interaction processes, the semantic values that can be attributed to the model itself. The cognitive process originates from this interaction. The theoretical discussion is supported by exemplar case studies carried out by the authors over almost twenty years. Finally, the concepts of uniqueness and authenticity need to be again pondered in light of the digital era. Indeed, real and virtual should be considered as a continuum, as they exchange information favoring new processes of interaction and critical thinking.

Starting from our experience in this domain, we discuss some fundamental concepts about the potentialities of the virtual reconstructions of cultural sites inside museums, with a specific focus on the communication needs, the design, the combination of media, the interaction interfaces, and the embodiment. We conceive a virtual reconstruction as a digital ecosystem, whose main peculiarities are (1) 3D reconstruction, (2) inclusivity, and (3) interactivity. A virtual reconstruction, in a wide sense, should integrate different levels of visualization, both realistic and symbolic; 3D models; metadata; storytelling; behaviors; and tools of visualization and interaction, in order to "reconstruct" and communicate a cultural context, an ecosystem where all the information is integrated. Despite the great advancements of the last years in the digitization process, computer graphics techniques, and archiving strategies, a basic limit of most of virtual museums is that they do not fire up the attention and the involvement of the public: they lack stimulating activities for visitors, narratives metaphors, and emotional impact. The interaction interfaces are not always simple to understand and to control in a few minutes, and they can generate a sense of frustration that causes users to abandon the application after a short and superficial approach. No gap should exist between knowledge and communication. But how can we translate the complexity of the knowledge in appealing to users and into simple applications that fit with the public's need? This article focuses on some communication rules and criteria that are often considered of minor importance by the researchers working in the field of digital cultural heritage but that are really essential to cultural transmission, especially inside museums. We believe that a stronger collaboration between research institutions and museums and among different disciplines would be recommended. Given this premise, we present the Etruscanning EU project, developed in 2011-2013, focused on the virtual reconstruction of two important Etruscan tombs of the Orientalizing period: the Regolini-Galassi tomb in Cerveteri and the tomb n.5 of Monte Michele in Veii.

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Virtual Museums (VMs) and their audiences have always been studied as separated worlds. Recently the importance of cross-methodological studies has been accepted by the academic sector for their usefulness in the process of assessing the impact of such VMs. Hedonic aspects, such as emotions, senses, perception, and environmental atmosphere rather than technicalities, like usability and affordance, have indeed played a precise and crucial role in the meaning-making of the world around us. This contribution will highlight the need for a collaborative sharing of ideas among designers and developers, creators and technicians, in order to reach sensory immersion and emotional involvement in VMs that will translate into enhanced participation and the predisposition to assimilate and memorize cultural contents. It has been stated that “a virtual museum is a digital entity.” As such, it is inevitably based on technology, on its user interface (UI), on the visualization solutions it employs, and on its usability and ability to interact with the end user in order to transfer a certain message. VMs are designed to complement, enhance, or augment the ordinary museum experience through contextualization, narration, personalization, interactivity and richness of content. This contribution originates not only from the lessons learned in twenty years of research by CNR ITABC, but it also moves one step further in the direction of exchanged experiences and good practices between the humanistic and the technological sectors, therefore contributing to the promotion of lifelong learning in Virtual Museums.

The basic idea of a hologram is an apparition of something that does not exist but appears as if it was just in front of our eyes. These illusion techniques were invented a long time ago. The philosopher and alchemist Giovanni Battista della Porta invented an effect that was later developed and brought to fame by Prof. J. H. Pepper (1821–1900) and applied in theatrical performances. The innovation nowadays consists in the adopted technology to produce them. Taking advantage of the available digital technologies, the challenge we are going to discuss is using holograms in the museum context, inside showcases, to realize a new form of scenography and dramaturgy around the exhibited objects. Case studies will be presented, with a detailed analysis of the EU project CEMEC (Connecting Early Medieval European Collections), where holographic showcases have been designed, built and experimented in EU museums. In this case, the coexistence in the same space of the real artifact and the virtual contents, and interior setup of the showcase, its dynamic lighting system, the script and the sound, converge to create an expressive unity. The reconstruction of sensory and symbolic dimensions that are ‘beyond’ any museum object can take the visitor in the middle of a lively and powerful experience with such technology, and represents an advancement in the museological sector. User experience results and a list of best practices will be presented in the second part of the paper, out of the tests and research activities conducted in these three years of the project.