Sculptural Fragments From The Church Of San Gennaro Extra Moenia In Naples: Digital Twins For Heritage Knowledge, Analysis And Fruition

This paper examines the role that new technologies and digital representation strategies can play in the conservation and enhancement of the medieval sculptural heritage, often difficult to understand due to its fragmented and lacunar state. The case study presented is the apparatus of sculptural fragments belonged to the Church of San Gennaro Extra Moenia in Naples and today preserved in the Palatine Chapel of the Castel Nuovo Museum. The creation of a library of digital twins becomes a useful tool for academics, enabling them both to enrich their knowledge of sculptural fragments and to advance hypotheses and reconstructive analyses in a digital environment. The design of a virtual reality experience through the use of QR codes and Google Cardboard also allows the creation of new ways of fruition of medieval heritage, especially for nonexpert audiences who do not always appreciate traditional methods of cultural meaning transmission.