Virtual reality at the Tarvisio Mining Heritage Museum: IKON takes visitors into the Bretto Gallery

The Tarvisio Mining Heritage Museum has been enhanced with a virtual reality experience developed by IKON: visitors can now virtually descend into the Bretto Gallery, 240 metres underground, retracing over ninety years of the region's mining history.
 

At the heart of the installation is an immersive simulation of the historic cage lift. Once the headset is on, the museum floor gives way to the void of the mine shaft: the descent begins. The journey is not only vertical: it is also temporal. Each metre of tunnel corresponds to a chronological leap through the entire lifespan of the mine, from 1899 to 1991. The walls come alive, the figures of miners re-emerge, and the voices of the past breathe life back into a buried world.
 

The project, developed by IKON for the Municipality of Tarvisio, was born from the need to make a cultural heritage site difficult to access physically available to the wider public. XR technology becomes here a tool for both accessibility and storytelling, allowing visitors to explore a stretch of tunnel that cannot be entered in person while discovering its history through an immersive narrative.