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 culturaland environmental resources, programmed and incentivized within the PST - "PianoStrategico di Sviluppo del Turismo 2017-2022" of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism - represent an extraordinary opportunity to promoteand extend responsible, cultured tourism attentive to the development of the maincentres, also of the smaller towns and the Inner Areas, acting as drivers both froman economic point of view - as future development resources for the repopulationof areas subject to abandonment and marginalization - and as opportunities to promote the rediscovery and the start of a new cultural trend able to promote knowledgeand enhancement of the multiple resources of the territory, going beyond the currentrange of users and incidence. The paper analyses these aspects, combining them withthe themes of integrated enhancement of the cultural heritage of the Inner Areas andwith the sustainable tourism policies of the 2030 Agenda. In particular, it analyses theways in which the use of new technologies and digital tools applied to cultural heritage can significantly contribute to the enhancement and cultural promotion of InnerAreas and territorial contexts penalised by the absence of effective infrastructures andnetworks. Through the principles of sustainability, innovation, accessibility and thephysical and cultural permeability of places, which are the basis of the PST 2017-2022,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 butwhich are crucial and strategic in terms of increasing social, cultural and economicvalue; of overcoming differences and promoting new competitive scenarios centredon the complexity and variety of the heritage visited (cultural permeability) and onthe themes of the uniqueness and richness of stratified territorial and environmentalheritages.