Agrigento Italian Capital of Culture 2025: Heritage Agrigento
by Ignazio Caloggero

The Heritage Agrigento web area, made available free of charge to the community, is a fundamental tool for anyone who wishes to map the cultural heritage of their territory, for the most varied reasons, from the preparatory study for the creation of an ecomuseum or for the creation of experiential itineraries of a tourist nature or interpretation of cultural heritage, or more. The inclusion, in the second phase, of audio guides and QR codes will increase the global usability of the Cultural Heritage. Finally, the creation of experiential itineraries envisaged in the third sentence will constitute a new way of describing the territory. 

The mapping and related online publication of the cultural heritage of the Agrigento area will be divided into three distinct phases:

• First phase: Creation of the Cultural Heritage Archive divided into various thematic archives (fully operational by spring 2024)
• Second phase: Accessible Cultural Heritage (fully operational by 2024)
  • Insertion of audio guides in the cataloged Cultural Heritage files
  • Creation of QR-Codes relating to the main listed monuments
  • Accessible Cultural Heritage Archive
• Third Phase: Creation of Experiential Itineraries (based on a holistic approach to the valorization of the territory, following the experiential and Heritage Interpretation principles) (starting from 2024)
• Fourth Phase: Creation of a semantic archive, which integrates the existing archive with semantic Artificial Intelligence. This will allow an improvement in the search for information and in the automatic generation of holistic itineraries. It will be possible to query the Heritage Archive using text and voice, overcoming the limits of current metadata (categories and hashtags). The testing phase is underway, with the expectation of publishing the first prototype by spring 2024.

Web areas called "Cities on the Net” where it will be possible to view all the archives at the single city level.

The first phase is already well advanced, since it is part of a cataloging project of the Sicilian cultural heritage which has seen the creation of the Heritage Archive which currently contains over 13.000 cataloged assets. The idea is to create thematic sub-archives that can be reached directly without the use of filters. There are around 1.300 properties already cataloged that concern the Agrigento area, destined to increase significantly by the end of 2024.

Thematic archives foreseen by the first phase 

• Cultural Heritage in evidence
• Archaeological heritage
• Enogastronomic Heritage
• Museums and Ecomuseums
• Military Historical Archive
• Ancient Paths
• Atlas of Intangible Cultural Heritage
  • Myths and Legends
  • Holidays and Celebrations
  • Expressions
  • Places of memory
  • Historical personalities of culture
  • Crafts and Knowledge
• Archives divided by regional registers
  • REIS "Register of Intangible Heritage of Sicily"
  • IWB "Places of Identity and Memory"
  • PAT: Traditional Agri-food Products
  • REIMAR "Register of Mediterranean Fishing Identities and Seaside Villages"

To find out the progress of the project, I invite you to visit the recently established web area, which will be followed by other areas relating to the other Sicilian provinces:

The Province of Agrigento on the Net: Heritage Agrigento

Ignazio Caloggero