Beyond time, within wonder: WAY Experience's emotional map

There is a different way to move through Italian beauty: not looking at it from afar, but stepping inside it. This is the idea behind WAY Experience's emotional map, a journey that connects some of the landmark sites of Italian culture through immersive virtual reality experiences. Not cold reconstructions, but stories that weave together historical rigour and emotion, turning the visit from passive observation into an encounter.

"The emotional map is the deepest synthesis of our work: a journey across Italy, uniting past and present, memory and technology," says Marco Pizzoni, founder and CEO of WAY Experience.

Florence: inside Brunelleschi's Dome

In Florence, the experience Brunelleschi's Dome. Building the Impossible, created with Slow Tour Tuscany and the Opera del Duomo and launched on 10 July 2025, takes visitors inside the fifteenth-century building site. With high-resolution headsets you discover the construction techniques that made possible the largest masonry dome ever built, alternating the visit to the real spaces with virtual immersion.

Milan: the Duomo as you have never seen it

Since June 2025, the Duomo Smart Experience, produced by the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo with WAY Experience, guides you through the exterior, the museum and the interior of the cathedral. The 5K virtual reality content, created by a team of 18 professionals, reconstructs eight historic buildings, maps 17 square kilometres of the city and animates 114 characters, bringing back to light the lost Laghetto di Santo Stefano. The narration is by Luciano Bertoli, with a 3D ambisonic soundscape by Fabio Sirna.

Syracuse: from temple to cathedral, all the way to the catacombs

In Syracuse the journey reaches the Cathedral and the Catacomb of San Giovanni. Virtual reality reconstructs the Temple of Athena and its transformation into a cathedral, and leads into the early Christian catacomb, drawing on the studies of Paolo Orsi and Francesco Saverio Cavallari: the first time virtual reality has entered a catacomb.

A journey that keeps growing

The map continues underground in Perugia, on the Isola di San Lorenzo, and reaches the Vittoriale degli Italiani in Gardone Riviera with Vivere inimitabile, dedicated to Gabriele d'Annunzio. Each stop adds a piece to a single idea: to unite past and present so that heritage can be lived, not just observed.

You can find out where to experience the emotional map on our experiences page.