Digitisation and Enabling Technologies for Inclusive Use of Cultural and Environmental Resources: Italian Cultural Itinerary

The tools of digitisation and enabling technologies for an inclusive use of cultural and environmental resources, programmed and incentivized within the PST – “Piano Strategico di Sviluppo del Turismo 2017-2022” (PST) of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism - represent an extraordinary opportunity to promote and extend responsible, cultured tourism attentive to the development of the main centres, also of the smaller towns and the Inner Areas, acting as drivers both from an economic point of view - as future development resources for the repopulation of areas subject to abandonment and marginalization - and as opportunities to promote the rediscovery and the start of a new cultural trend able to promote knowledge and enhancement of the multiple resources of the territory, going beyond the current range of users and incidence (see PST 2017-2022). The paper analyses these aspects, combining them with the themes of integrated enhancement of the cultural heritage of the Inner Areas and with the sustainable tourism policies of the 2030 Agenda. In particular, it analyses the ways in which the use of new technologies and digital tools applied to cultural heritage can significantly contribute to the enhancement and cultural promotion of Inner Areas and territorial contexts penalised by the absence of effective infrastructures and net-works.Through the principles of sustainability, innovation, accessibility and the physical and cultural permeability of places, which are the basis of the 2017-2022 TSP, new ways are outlined for the valorisation and tourist enjoyment of the cultural heritage of sites and territorial itineraries that are usually little explored and practised but which are crucial and strategic in terms of increasing social, cultural and economic value; of overcoming differences and promoting new competitive scenarios centred on the complexity and variety of the heritage visited (cultural permeability) and on the themes of the unique-ness and richness of stratified territorial and environmental heritages.