Ontology-based visualisation of cultural heritage

In recent years, a number of projects have been undertaken for the access to cultural heritage that rely on metadata derived from an ontology. Ontologies also open to visualization techniques that leverage the structure of the semantic relations to bridge the gap between the complexity of data and the need for immediate, simplified access. In this paper, we address the representation and access to the intangible cultural heritage, that has received much attention recently and typically lacks a physical counterpart. In order to illustrate this approach, we describe two case studies in ontologies and visualization for cultural heritage. In the first case study, the user is immersed in a 3D labyrinth where turning points and paths represent, respectively, a set of cultural artifacts and the semantic relations holding among them; the second case study relies on an ontology of contemporary art and a cartographic visualization of the public art in a city.