Enhance the historical city with new technologies

In 2016 the Municipality of Brescia approved the new Urban Plan of the City in which importance
was given to the enhancement of cultural heritage. The aim of the Plan is to draw a guideline
for sustainable development for the territory and in the urban center this idea was translated
into a maintenance program for the protection of historical heritage. The program concerns two
aspects: historical buildings and open spaces; this because importance was given to the urban
core as a single entity composed by monuments and large squares but also to other types of
assets that are important to maintain the identity of the ancient city. The paper illustrates a
work done by the authors, which consisted in setting up a methodology aimed at building a
database with GIS software. The starting point was the construction of the cognitive framework,
collecting data about buildings, open spaces and people, which were put inside the database.
With the GIS software it was feasible to highlight these data into specifi c maps. Then a webmap
application, available also on smartphones and tablets, was created with a double value:
the fi rst is that it allows to manage all the information about the urban core and, on the other
side, it can be used as a guide map during the visit of the site. So, a support tool for the urban
plan was provided, to promote the potentiality of the site and to create the conditions for its
sustainable development. The paper goal is to explain the method devised and employed and
to show its possible future applications considering that the Municipality of Brescia is carrying
out many projects in the way of recovering historical buildings and increasing the cultural and
tourist attraction of the city.