GARR AND CULTURAL HERITAGE

GARR has always been involved with the cultural heritage community providing an advanced network infrastructure and innovative tools for the protection and promotion of cultural heritage assets, for international collaborations with universities and research institutions for sharing and transmission of large amounts of data between institutions, and for the use of web applications (virtual museums, virtual archeology, geographic information systems). In 2015 for the first time monuments of high historical and artistic value were connected through GARR’s optical fibers. Several heritage sites – the Colosseum, Foro Romano e Palatino and the Museo Nazionale Romano (Palazzo Massimo, Crypta Balbi, Palazzo Altemps, Terme di Diocleziano), and the Pompei Archaeological Area – were connected thanks to the agreements with the Superintendencies of the Rome and Pompei archaeological sites. This collaboration between GARR and the Superintendency is part of a strategy of conservation, study and enhancement of the extraordinary cultural heritage of Italy through the use of high level ICT technologies. A first concrete example is the SITAR territorial system (Sistema Informativo Territoriale Archeologico di Roma - Geographic Archaeological Information System of Rome), a system that can be considered an online Land Registry of archaeological information about the metropolitan area of Rome. This system manages the growing amounts of data generated by the Special Superintendency for the Archaeological Heritage of Rome by means of advanced technological tools.