Virtual Museum as opportunity and perspective for tourism development: some italian case.

Once the concept of a static exhibition container has passed and modes of content presentation have been renewed by the use of technology and intelligent systems, new museum solutions form diversified tourist attractions between culture and entertainment. If the education function, in keeping with the museum, is added with communicative-experiential components, the wunderkammer of the past take the form of modern places of "edutainment". In this sense, the modern technologies of virtual museum represent an applied and applicable model to the electronic museum (properly online) but also to real museums, many of which are still struggling towards an interactive multimedia translation with 3D techniques or immersion into the augmented reality. Many museum structures are actually capable of virtualization and they will represent a new impetus to the existing tourist flows and driving force for the development of the territories. Some recent Italian achievements, from the MAV in Herculaneum to Virtual Pompeii, from the Time Elevator to the Virtual museum of ancient Rome, that are examples of extension or completion of tourism linked to pre-existing cultural realities, are gradually imposing as new and exciting tourist destinations.