If visitors won’t go to Heritage, Heritage must go to visitors. Digitisation of Heritage in time of Corona

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the numerous circumstances that the whole world faced in 2020 due to the unprecedented Covid-19 outbreak. By sourcing the inspiration in Heritage Studies, the focus is on the impacts that Coronavirus has had on travel, cultural tourism and that way on art, culture and heritage itself. In addition, the paper introspects how did the globalization and rapid technological development bring to the immediate transition from material/traditional ways of preserving and interpreting heritage to the digital/virtual ones. Through some examples, we will see the challenges that heritage managers and stakeholders have faced in this state of emergency, but also some of the best practices that allowed people to consume heritage from their homes. Due to the fact that the Coronavirus pandemic is still active at the moment of writing these lines, precise and thorough analysis of the matter are still impossible. However, some initial reflections are more than welcome, since this situation will definitely have long-term impacts on our society and needs to be addressed immediately and seriously.