Costantino D’Orazio.
Thanks to National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) funding (Mission 1, Component 2 – Culture 4.0, Measure 1, Investment 1.2), the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria has designed and implemented a targeted intervention aimed at removing perceptual and cognitive barriers with the objective of redefining the visitor experience through new content and accessible tools, significantly expanding audience participation.
The cornerstone of the project is the idea of offering a new narrative of the collection privileging universal content over specialized information, making it accessible to diverse audiences. Traditional audio guides have been produced in Italian and English structured around a tour of thirty masterpieces. Alongside these, dedicated audio guides for children lead younger visitors to discover naturalistic details -such as animals, plants, flowers, and atmospheric phenomena – and explore their symbolic meanings.
The core of this innovation is AIfeelGNU, a web application conceived by the Gallery’s staff and developed by TuoMuseo. Powered by generative artificial intelligence, the app creates customized itineraries based on an emotional mapping of the artworks. Upon accessing the app via smartphone, visitors are greeted with the question “How are you?” and are guided by a virtual assistant along a tailor-made route that factors in age, available time, and emotional state. The result is an interactive, dynamic experience capable of accompanying and transforming emotions during the visit, offering a vivid, contemporary perception of art.
In addition to the digital dimension, the project led to the creation of a comprehensive suite of tools designed to overcome sensory and cognitive barriers, developed with the direct involvement of associations and experts. Among these, the tactile path represents one of the most significant interventions. Designed for blind and visually impaired individuals, the path integrates seven original sculptures and five resin tactile reliefs that translate celebrated paintings from the collection into touch-perceptible forms.
These reliefs, positioned near the original masterpieces and perfectly integrated into the museum layout, allow for a spatial and compositional reading of the pictorial images, rendering their volumes, proportions, and details tactilely legible. The selected artworks were chosen to provide iconographic, typological and chronological variety effectively illustrating different aspects of Medieval and Renaissance figurative production.
Each component of the tactile path – both original sculptures and resin reliefs – is equipped with a tactile QR code. This consists of a small magnet located at the bottom right of each element, which grants access to the artwork’s audio description. Via smartphone, visitors can listen to content that goes beyond a mere description of the piece; it provides step-by-step guidance for tactile exploration, suggesting hand movements, key points of attention and methods of sensory interpretation. The experience thus becomes active and autonomous built upon the integration of sensory perception and narrative. The path was implemented by Atlante Servizi Culturali in collaboration with typhlologist Deborah Tramentozzi. The complete list of artworks and their corresponding audio descriptions can be consulted on the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria Official Website.
For Deaf People, the museum developed a series of 16 video-stories focused on the collection’s major masterpieces. This content, available in Italian and English, integrates sign language, subtitles, audio, and high-resolution images of the artworks to offer a comprehensive and inclusive narrative. Visitors can access these video-stories by scanning a QR code at the entrance of the exhibition path with their smartphones and playing the videos corresponding to the progressive numbers indicated on the artwork captions. All materials are also accessible via the “Accessibility” page on the museum’s website. The project was coordinated by the Umbrian section of the National Deaf Agency (ENS APS-EPS), involving specialized interpreters and technicians.
Commitment to cognitive accessibility is further demonstrated by two thematic itineraries designed in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC): “Animals at the Museum” which explores the meaning and stories of animals in the collection and “The Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria Tells the Story of Perugia” which focuses on the history of the city and Palazzo dei Priori historic seat of the museum.
These itineraries are distributed free of charge in printed format and are available digitally on the museum’s website, allowing visitors to preview and prepare for their visit in advance. The design, translation and adaptation process was conducted by speech therapists Daniela Toccaceli and Chiara Occhigrossi in partnership with the associations ANFFAS “Per Loro” APS-ETS and “Popy on the road”. Content was thoroughly tested and validated through workshop activities curated by Atlante Servizi Culturali, which directly engaged members of the involved associations.
Taken together, these interventions outline a new museum paradigm where technology, accessibility, and active participation intertwine. The Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria establishes itself as a space capable of welcoming and engaging diverse audiences, offering personalized and genuinely barrier-free experiences.