Museums embrace augmented reality and beacon-based apps for enhanced visitor experiences

Three Italian museums have launched mobile apps that leverage different technologies to enrich visits. The MUSE science museum in Trento uses Google's VPS (Visual Positioning Service) for indoor navigation, enabling augmented reality dinosaurs to appear around skeletons, modeled by 3D artists based on recent scientific studies. The app, celebrating the museum's fifth anniversary, is not yet publicly available but will be used on in-house devices. The Museo Nazionale della Certosa di Calci introduced MusAR, an augmented reality app that reveals hidden artworks: an illusionistic fresco with celestial concerts, a "ghost" fresco by Pietro Giarrè depicting musicians that was later painted over, a 15th-century illuminated choir book, and a "guidonian hand" from a 1713 music treatise. Content is accessible offline for post-visit study. The Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma launched Spazi900, which uses Bluetooth beacons to deliver content about 20th-century Italian poets and writers as visitors move through the library. The app provides photos, videos, autograph manuscripts, and objects, exploring each author's writing process. All three apps are free on iOS and Android.