The urban tour along the ancient walls of Palermo's Cassaro: a virtual rebuilding and a formulation of a new touristic circuit

Ref.: 235
Área temática: 03 Integridad visual de los paisajes urbanos históricos
Fecha de recepción: 15/11/2008

AUTORES (* Autor principal)

MICELI, Chiara * (Italia) - University of Palermo
MICELI, Paola (Italia) - University of Palermo
SIGNORELLO, Melania (Italia) - University of Palermo
TARANTINO, Daphne (Italia) - University of Palermo

ABSTRACT

Our research focuses on the ancient Phoenician Palermo, which in the VI century was surrounded with a strong wall belt. In the urban structure there were an older core (the paleapolis) and a more recent quarter (the neapolis), which were sided with two rivers (the Papireto and the Kemonia). There have been a lot of changes in the course of history: new rebuildings were made with the Arabs and also with the Normans. In the Middle Ages the remains of the wall were absorbed by a lot of palaces which were built above them with a strong visual impact which changed the urban landscape.
Today a lot of such architectures are forgotten and would deserve more attention, such as protection and refuntionalization interventions in order to make them pregnant elements inside the urban texture.
Nowadays the history of these ancient fortifications is worth of being rediscovered through a "memory rebuilding" which aims at its revitalization for tourist purposes. It would allow the recover of archaeological remains and the making of substainable tourism, which should be meant as a guided process permitting the preservation of cultural heritage and considering the global management of resources, in order to assure their surviving.
Thus the city would become a resource for tourism and tourism a resource for the city, with a contribution for a better environment quality and for the creation of a new local reality.
Nowadays such remains, which can't be seen any longer, could be qualified through the help of informatic systems, 3D-modeling techniques and virtual simulations. The results, which have a strong visual impact and can be clearly read by the users, can give birth to new guided courses which can rise the interest of viewers through the rediscovery of forgotten landscapes inside the historic urban texture.
In such a way information kiosks could be set along the course: it would be possible to find material concerning either the tour or each architecture. Such project would allow the "lighting" of buildings which are hidden today, giving origin to new services for the city and new occasions of social aggregation. The citizens, who would be more aware, would give a contribution to the preservation and the development of cultural heritage; they would become "tourists in their own town". Thus the city would become alive again not only for local tourism but also for foreigners and for websurfers.
In fact the use of new digital supports offers a new way of reading the historic urban landscape, resetting the space-temporal distances inside the endless cyber-space of "augmented-reality" systems.
Thus the true journey experience is not only the real one, but also the virtual one.

BIBLIOGRAFÍA