The White Marble of the Gods: a way back to the island of Paros

This chapter expands and reports on the results of the research carried out, during the second Underground4value Training School held in Murcia by Research Group 1. The team challenged since the beginning the two statements intended by the assigned research question "Structuring participatory processes for creating an archaeological park of the Paros marble quarries". Firstly, it confronted the statement "creating an archaeological park": in a country abundant of archaeological sites such as Greece, is this park an adequate instrument for catalysing sustainable development and promoting the cultural transition of an island, Paros, primarily known as a popular tourist spot? Secondly, it questioned about a better framing for "the participatory processes", with the local community not only focused on a self-generated imaginary, but on a global imaginary, eventually produced or exposed outside the island itself, such as the Parian marble statues in the most famous world's museums. Putting the storytelling at the core of the strategy, the chapter aims at supporting a cultural transition in the way local stakeholders, mainly involved in tourism, and their potential customers perceive the island of Paros. Nonetheless, to focus on the white marble demands for developing a process of place's virtualisation, with the symbolic and metaphoric dimension prevailing on the territorial one and asks for creating imaginaries "more fluid, ubiquitous, autonomous from the time and space dimensions". As a step further, the methodological approach was about creating a digitalised museum focused on the Parian marble. Thanks to the opportunities offered by ICT, the team imagined a physical/virtual space telling the story of this unique material, the quarries, the artists workshops, and finally its products, those masterpieces of the Classical age disseminated in museums and heritage sites worldwide. By doing that, the museum will bring all of them back home.