Virtual tour. Anywhere and nowhere

The proliferation of virtual tours in the field of visual and multimedia communication raises a series of questions that affect various scientific disciplinary sectors, including that of representation and visual culture. The health emergency due to the Covid pandemic, which resulted in the closure of museums for a long period, has undoubtedly contributed to the spread of virtual tours with the aim of offering alternative solutions to an ever growing demand for cultural knowledge. What is a virtual tour? How, through its use, can the real experience of the modern tourist be replicated? The contribution intends to propose possible answers to these questions on the basis of some critical considerations concerning the structural and semantic aspects of a virtual tour. There is also the problem of how its predominantly visual structure can affect the process of conveying the cultural message also in relation to the behavioral adaptation actions that the ‘remote visitor’ must necessarily implement when deciding to venture into a virtual visit path.