Glass Beacon Museum

‘Glass Beacon Museum: the museum of the future‘ is an experimental project, which allows visitors to visit the Mercati di Traiano-Museo dei Fori Imperiali in Rome in an innovative and emotional way.

The use of multimedia technologies (images, holographic projections, 3D animations and augmented reality) allows the visitor, equipped with the latest generation of glasses with a small display and its own audio, an entertaining and educational experience, which tells the story of the Markets of Trajan and its protagonists.

In this project for the first time, beacons were combined with augmented reality viewers to provide information and visit support in an informal way to discover ancient Rome.

Augmented Reality, in fact, by allowing additional information and images to be inserted into the user’s field of vision compared to the real thing, allows visitors to enter into a multimedia experience without distracting their attention from viewing the works.

The most significant pieces of the Museum’s collection tell the story of the Imperial Forums, using narration to enrich the visitor’s experience with quirks and anecdotes of imperial Rome. The visit includes 14 points of interest, located on the first and second floors of the Mercati di Traiano, and two outdoor areas, one on the first terrace and the other on Via della Torre.

For the first time, the story of the vicissitudes that led to the formation of the Imperial Fora was told through the voices of some of the protagonists that are part of the museum’s permanent collection: Constantine, Trajan, Winged Victory, a Province, a Caryatid, Chrysippus, a Dace, an Amorino, Mars and Venus, and Aeneas. These characters, through their own stories and their 3D reconstruction, with the aid of augmented reality displays, illustrated to visitors the history of the Imperial Forums in relation to where the statues were originally located. The narration also included, in some cases, curiosities and anecdotes, such as the story of the discovery of Constantine’s head, the origin of the Caryatids, customs of the Dacians and the birth of the love between Mars and Venus. Two external points complete the itinerary, marking the transition from first-person narration to third-person narration: the Overlook on the Imperial Fora and the Tower of the Militia, one of which is an in-depth look at the rediscovery of the Fora and Trajan’s Markets, the other at the life stages of the Tower and the Garden of the Militia.

In order to offer users, without focusing on a specific target, the most interesting and stimulating experience possible, it is in fact necessary to work first of all on the content, on the story to be told, and only from there to focus on the technologies to be applied. Photographic material from the Photographic Archive and Prints Cabinet of the Museum of Rome and from the Photographic Archive of the Imperial Forum Museum, reconstructive 3D videos, images, accompanied by audio tracks with a strong emotional impact bring the museum context alive and allow the development of a high-impact storytelling.