Mobile apps for a sustainable cultural-tourism experience. “The Betrothed 3.0” an Italian case study

The opportunity of mobility, mass tourism and Internet have allowed many peo- ple to know places, museums, environment, cultures before otherwise precluded to direct expe- rience. O
n the other hand, this potential has taken a sort of consumerist drift that makes contacts superficial, stereotypical and sometimes predatory rather than a mutual exchange and enrich- ment of humanity and knowledge. M
obile devices, pocketable web and technology widespread in our environment become tools to bring back to sustainable size and conscious knowledge of places and cultures by discovering the true nature and identity of the places visited. The main goal of research was to develop a tool to let people discover the genius loci, the actual historical, cultural and artistic vocation of a place, in this case the so called “triangolo della moda” in Milan city center, throughout a multilayered story-telling approach to emphasize the identity of the this territory overwritten and hidden by the settlement of many brands show- room of the “made in Italy” and became in the recent years one of the most famous luxury and fashion district world-wide. A mobile app based on the novel The Betrothed written by Alessandro Manzoni – one of the most famous Italian writers – and his house-museum located in Milan is designed, prototyped and tested with users to allow people to discover the city. The application describes the environment and its history through sedimentation of three tem- poral layers: XVII – century when the novel took place – XIX century – when the author lived – and the contemporary. In a sort of hypothetic vertical intersection between the periods and plac- es the app The Betrothed 3.0 guides people in discovering hidden corners, memories imprints using augmented reality, geo-localized information and aggregated or user-generated content to share collaboratively the experience human, social and cultural of the territory.