A multimedia catalog for the UNESCO site of Mount Etna (Italy): a pilot project of an aerial and street view level tour

The aim of this paper is to present a digital project to improve the access to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Mount Etna. It proposes an interactive and multimedia catalog made with Google Street View technologies. The catalog can be browsable on a 360° virtual tour, “augmented” by specific aerial tours, captions with descriptive sheets and videos and enjoyable also in VR mode. The main goal of this project is to enhance the digital accessibility to one of the most important and famous naturalistic sites in the world, improving users’ digital enjoyment. It represents an improvement compared to the virtual tours Google itself launched with the publication of Mount Etna’s craters on Google Maps. This project, in fact, offers a wide range of possibilities to communicate and increase the digital access to this wonderful natural landscape. Multimedia solutions improve travel experiences by adopting technologies that also support the use of mobiles and VR devices. These devices can actually offer an immediate and immersive combination of perception and knowledge, providing a new form of digital accessibility