Roman Villas and Domus. From digital acquisition on the field to novel approaches in interactive storytelling inside VR environments

This article brings together the research experiences of different case studies concerning Roman villas and Domus. In these researches a workflow has been developed that goes from the digital acquisition on the field to the virtual reconstruction up to new ways to communicate the cultural heritage through interactive storytelling and virtual reality environments. The article highlights the importance of 3D technology for the study and interpretation of cultural heritage, provides an overview of the relationship between archaeology and virtual reality, highlights the state of the art of the major open issues of virtual archaeology and how we tried to mitigate these issues using semantic tools to record and illustrate the reconstructive processes. Then there is a substantial part that concerns 3 case studies (the villa of Livia at Prima porta, the Domus of Caecilius Iucundus at Pompei and the villa of the Volusii at Fiano Romano). A discussion summarizing the most important aspects of the three experiences is provided at the end of the article.