Sardegna Romanica
Technology and culture to connect a distributed heritage.
In 2021, The Big Wave created a digital ecosystem dedicated to enhancing Sardinia’s Romanesque heritage: a mobile app, a web platform, beacons and multimedia content designed to guide visitors through monuments and territories.
A distributed heritage, one digital experience
Sardinia’s Romanesque heritage does not exist in a single place. It is spread across the entire island, through cities, small towns, countryside and landscapes far from the main tourist routes. The challenge was to turn this geographical dispersion into a connected network.
The technology developed by The Big Wave connected monuments located far apart through a single digital experience, supporting visitors before, during and after their visit.
The project was developed within GRITACCESS – Grand Itinéraire Tyrrhénien Accessible, under the Interreg Italy-France Maritime 2014-2020 Programme, with the aim of making cultural heritage more accessible, easier to discover and better connected.
The place activates the story
The Bluetooth Low Energy beacon network connects physical heritage with digital content: when visitors enter the proximity area of a monument, the app can recognise the context and deliver the relevant experience.
Monument
The physical place is the starting point of the experience.
→Beacon
The BLE sensor detects the visitor’s proximity.
→App
The app connects the visitor’s location to the monument and the visit route.
→Content
Texts, images, audio, itineraries and virtual tours become available in the right context.
Sardegna Romanica on the visitor’s smartphone
The Big Wave developed the mobile application for iOS and Android, integrated with GPS and beacon technology, together with the web-based management platform.
The experience was designed in Italian, English and French and lets visitors explore monuments through maps and geolocation, historical and architectural information, photographs, narrated audio guides, itineraries and immersive content.
Proximity can also trigger notifications and specific content based on the visitor’s presence at the site.
Technology creates value when it helps tell the story of a place
The project went far beyond developing the app. Content specifically designed for digital use was produced and organised for the monuments.
Historical and descriptive texts, images, information sheets, translations, narrated audio guides, itineraries and virtual tours work together to create a seamless experience between the physical place and its digital storytelling.
Content was developed in the three languages included in the project: Italian, English and French.
Technology becomes a tool for inclusion, not something that gets in the way of the cultural experience.
More ways to access cultural heritage
From the outset, Sardegna Romanica was designed to broaden access to cultural heritage.
Audio guides, digital content available on visitors’ own devices and virtual access to sites help overcome some of the physical and information barriers often associated with distributed heritage, where monuments may not always be open or easy to reach.
The GRITACCESS project specifically places the platform within accessible-tourism strategies, including users with different mobility and sensory needs.
A network to manage, update and understand
Behind the app, The Big Wave developed an interconnected web platform to organise and publish content and to turn the proximity network into a useful tool for managing cultural heritage.
Centralised management
Texts, information sheets, audio guides, itineraries and virtual tours can be managed through a web dashboard.
Proximity
The sensors connect the physical place to digital content and enable app transit events to be recorded.
Anonymous visitor flows
The system was designed to analyse aggregated data such as visits and dwell times without directly identifying the visitor.
From the original project to a broader network
The infrastructure was designed to be scalable. From the 56 sites in the original configuration, by June 2024 the app included 81 locations across 79 municipalities.
From the Municipality of Santa Giusta to Fondazione Sardegna Isola del Romanico
The project was originally commissioned from The Big Wave by the Municipality of Santa Giusta as part of GRITACCESS.
The application, platform and network were subsequently entrusted to Fondazione Sardegna Isola del Romanico, with which The Big Wave continued maintenance and system updates.
Field-tested experience, now part of Fenicio®’s technology foundation
Sardegna Romanica shows how a network of cultural sites located far apart can become a single digital experience. The same approach can be applied to museum networks, cultural itineraries, historic villages, archaeological parks, trails and territorial systems.
Project developed within GRITACCESS
Interreg Italy-France Maritime 2014-2020 Programme.
Subsequent network management: Fondazione Sardegna Isola del Romanico.
From places to data, from content to experience
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