AUGMENTED REALITY. PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE.

The access to information is a right and a duty. An accessible website becomes a universal resource for all people who surf the net, it becomes a powerful tool to spread its message and its information with the conscious and the knowledge that the information will come to anyone who wants to access it. The innovative technologies of graphic communication (ICT) are the means to allow this cultural diffusion. In this paper the goal is to demonstrate that a conscious use of ICT allows the accessibility of the cultural heritage. The case study is on the prisons of the Inquisition in Palermo. A great opportunity has permitted to carry out a cultural, historical, architectural and social research with great impact factor on the international cultural interest. We are talking about the realization of a museum whose the main theme is the visit and the discovery of a monument of great prestige: the monumental building the “Steri” in Palermo. The museum is divided into sub themes including the one above all, that has aroused the international interest so much that it has been presented the instance to include the museum in the cultural heritage of UNESCO. It is the realization of a museum path that regards the cells of the Inquisition, which are located just inside of some buildings of the monumental building. The project, as a whole, is faced, in a total view, between the various competences implicated: historic, chemic, architectonic, topographic, drawing, representation, virtual communication, informatics. The birth of the museum will be a sum of the results of all these disciplines involved. Methodology, implementation, fruition, virtual museum, goals, 2D graphic restitution, effects on the cultural heritage and landscape environmental, augmented reality, Surveying 2D and 3D, hi-touch screen, Photogrammetric survey, Photographic survey, representation, drawing 3D and more than this has been dealt with this research. Methodology, implementation, fruition, virtual museum, goals, 2D graphic restitution, effects on the cultural heritage and landscape environmental, augmented reality, Surveying 2D and 3D, hi-touch screen, Photogrammetric survey, Photographic survey, representation, drawing 3D and more than this has been dealt with this research.