Museums around the world may borrow a leaf from the Italian Museum of Palazzo Valentini in Rome by adopting multimedia technology to protect their delicate and precious exhibits from natural or man-made effects.

According to Luisa Napoli and Paola Baldassarri, who were part of the team of experts that researched and restored the Palazzo Valentini ruins, the technique is being implemented in Italy for the first time.

“Virtual reconstructions, graphic effects and movies are used to revive the hypothetical original appearance of the environments and the daily life that took place here, to evoke the same feelings felt by the original inhabitants. This undertaking uses special software to manage dozens of projectors, electronically programmed lights, sound effects, and 3D reconstructions,” Napoli and Baldassarri write in their article Palazzo Valentini: Archaeological Discoveries and Redevelopment Projects published in the Frontiers of Architectural Research (2015) international journal.

Napoli and Baldassarri say the archaeological findings during the excavations led to substantial changes in the original project.

“We abandoned the idea of planning an exhibition area where the items will be displayed, and instead decided to establish in situ a museum of artefacts and environments based on the archaeological and historical structures found there. We implemented measures to make all the archaeological findings accessible, usable, and understandable to the greatest number of people possible.”

“Therefore, we built a museum of the very true ‘essence’ of the city of Rome that joins harmoniously and incorporates structures from different centuries and with different functions. The result is a space that allows the visitor to appreciate artefacts and structures while following a path through various historical ages — from the 16th-century courtyard to an ancient Roman domus with private thermal baths and to the pedestal of the Trajan’s Column by way of a Second World War air-raid shelter,” they add.

“Thanks to the continuous review of the project, with decisions made on the basis of feedback and additional changes needed, we have implemented a prototype of a third-millennium museum.

“We can confidently say that our objectives have been fully and successfully achieved.”