Santa-Clara-a-Velha: Virtual environments and cultural heritage

Virtual environments are often applied to create fictitious imagery. Archaeologists and historians usually have on the realism and accuracy of data and representations, the basis of their work. The main goal of this work is to show the usefulness of establishing a bridge between these two apparently different worlds. In the following sections, we will present a short introduction to Virtual Environments. We also make an introduction to the monastery of Santa Clara-a-Velha and its archaeological intervention Archaeological research, based on traditional methodologies and using virtual environments, is discussed as well as their advantages and problems. Finally we present the development of the virtual monastery of Santa Clara-a-Velha, its interactive exploitation and the thematic visit of different target-public.