Schifanoia palace in Ferrara a virtual storytelling for its knowledge and dissemination

Virtual Environment technologies are strongly increasing their importance in recent years, finding their place in different fields of application. Their versatility makes them adaptable for different contexts: in the Cultural Heritage field, for example, they have mostly been used to reconstruct ancient buildings and sites, visually restoring their original appearance, or to create amazing virtual tours of lost cities and places. However, these technologies have now also entered museums and cultural institutions, contributing in changing the concept itself of Museum as institution and its relation with the public, supporting an approach more centered on engagement and participatory experiences. In the present work, we describe our recent experience, focused on the Civic Museum of Schifanoia (Ferrara). Starting from the construction of virtual models, interactive and non-interactive, we pursued the aim to introduce edutainment paths in the museum, both increasing the value of cultural assets and creating an attractive pole for the visitors. The experimentation led to concrete results that introduced a reflection on what investigative methodologies and protocols are more suitable to be adopted in these cases, in compliance to the general aim of the project.