Interactive story maps for historical musical instruments: a 3D and semantic web tool for cultural heritage preservation

Ancient stringed instruments from the 17th and 18th centuries are essential for global cultural heritage but pose preservation and study challenges due to their fragility and rarity. Digital reproductions and interactive story maps offer new ways to analyse these instruments, providing historical, mechanical, and acoustic insights while aiding modern luthiers in replication. This paper presents a novel methodology and software that integrates 3D models of historical instruments into interactive story maps using Semantic Web technologies. The system enables users to explore 3D models with embedded annotations from Sketchfab and supports the creation of formal narratives enriched with geospatial and multimedia content. Each narrative event is linked to a backend knowledge base (KB) structured with established ontologies. The tool is open-source and web-based, and allows interoperability between its story maps and external KBs such as Wikidata and Europeana. It supports multiple levels of descriptive details, from precise 3D model annotations to broad geographic and temporal references. An evaluation case study featured 25 participants exploring a story map about a 1737 Antonio Stradivari violin, connected to a KB of 1716 triples. The results highlight the tool’s usability and effectiveness in representing the violin’s spatiotemporal and cultural context, showcasing the value of combining 3D models and geospatial data to enhance cultural heritage preservation.