A Virtual museum of the European Roots having the Danube as backbone

Marco MERLINI

(Lucian Blaga University- IPCTE, Sibiu, Romani)

A Virtual museum of the European Roots having the Danube as backbone

Outline: Building museums of the Danube basin as protagonists of Virtual Reality exhibitions aimed to generate social-economic benefits.

The presentation will illustrate a challenge put out by a network of 15 national and regional museums of history located in the Danube basin. The F-MU.S.EU.M. network is making an effort to establish innovative synergies between cultural heritage and Internet-digital multimedia devices in order to generate social-economic benefits able to trigger local economic development.
A special focus will be put on skills and tools developed to realize a 3D exhibition entitled the “Virtual museum of the European Roots” to show how the European identity was built over the millennia and which was the contribution of Eastern European ancient civilizations. The 3D presentation of the historical heritage is connected to touristic-cultural itineraries that start from the prehistoric collections held in trust by the partner museums. The “Virtual museum of the European Roots” is delivered on Internet and envisaged as an e-service that is manageable and require inexpensive software or hardware(www.europeanvirtualmuseum.net/virtual_museum/virtual_museum.asp).
Working as an international learning community, the networking museums are improving capacity building and technical cooperation developing and providing online courses and digital archaeological libraries as tools to create vibrant digital representations, Web exhibitions and 3D virtual reality.

Keywords: 3D exhibition online, Eastern European heritage, touristic-historical itineraries