Designing Augmented Reality Storytelling in Historical Palaces: The Royal Palace of Caserta as a Case Study

This paper presents a structured framework for designing spatial augmented reality (AR) storytelling in historical palaces, addressing the specific narrative and spatial challenges posed by these culturally layered environments. The framework identifies eight critical decision points that guide narrative design, including story orientation, site-specific methods, narrative scale, mediation strategies, and augmentation techniques. Its application is demonstrated through the design of an AR storytelling experience for the Queen's Apartments of the Royal Palace of Caserta, based atop a high-resolution digital twin of the palace, which served as the spatial foundation for precise, location-based augmented reality interactions. Leveraging the framework, the work proposes a narrative concept centered on experiencing the palace through the eyes of Queen Maria Carolina of Habsburg. Rather than offering a complete mobile application design, the framework provides a narrative backbone that supports coherent, scalable, and historically sensitive AR experiences in historical palaces and offers cultural heritage professionals a flexible yet grounded design tool to prototype, iterate, and expand AR storytelling strategies in complex heritage environments. CCS Concepts: Human-centered computing → Mixed / augmented reality; Contextual design; Information systems → Multimedia content creation