An Immersive Virtual Reality Application to Preserve the Historical Memory of Tangible and Intangible Heritage

Abstract

This paper concerns the valorization of a building that has been inaccessible for a long time: the Castle of Corsano, a small Italian village in the Salento area. Starting from the three-dimensional reconstruction of the rooms of the Castle and, in part, of its furnishings, it presents the development of a VR application with the possibility of interacting with the environments of the Palace and learning the historical information collected not only through bibliographic research but also through an act of remembering, which has involved, in particular, the elderly of the village. The goal is to create an archive of memory and make virtually accessible one of the most emblematic historical places of the urban network, which risks being definitively forgotten. Experimental tests were carried out on a heterogeneous sample of users to evaluate the factors characterising the sense of presence and the relationships between them. The results revealed a high level of involvement and perceived visual fidelity.