Preserving the Relationship Between Art and Architecture. A Mixed Reality Application for the ‘Gallery of Rare Paintings’ in the Church of San Pietro in Valle (Fano, Italy)

Extended reality is increasingly being used to disseminate cultural content, enabling innovative storytelling and experiences. Especially, Mixed Reality (MR) allows for the seamless integration of between virtual and real environments, transforming cultural sites into immersive multidimensional palimpsests of digital content. Building on these premises, the paper presents a MR experience of the Baroque church of San Pietro in Valle in Fano (Marche, Italy). The research intends to digitally re-establish the link between the art and architecture of the church, which was lost due to various historical events that deprived the building of its ‘gallery of rare paintings’. To achieve this goal, an on-site digital enhancement strategy is designed, implementing a MR environment that ensure the visitors to experience the church’s original art collection virtually relocated on site. Using a forefront MR headset, users can interact with the repositioned artworks, including pieces by Guido Reni, Simone Cantarini, and Matteo Loves and enrich their cultural encounters with interactive, immersive experiences. The result is a highly immersive cultural interaction that recreates value-based relationships, ensuring an experience of extended accessibility focused on heritage space and memory.