'Inside' the Great War:
an app to immerse yourself in the stories of the frontline
11/08/2023
An app that also works offline, with 130 stainless steel panels and as many tabs to quickly access an exciting narrative with texts, recordings and images.
On Mount Lagazuoi, the situation on the front line, where the Austro-Hungarian and Italian armies faced each other more than a century ago, is told in an original way: you walk along the paths and through the tunnels - one kilometre inside the mountain - discovering step by step many multimedia contents that enrich your experience.
Soup eaten from the mess-tins and sawdust bread, the cold, wire netting and tunnels inside the mountain, the extremely hard life in the trenches, marked by exhausting waits. Thanks to an app, the story of the First World War becomes even more vivid.
We are on Mount Lagazuoi, one of the war sites grouped into one open-air Museum of the First World War in the Cortina Delicious area - the largest of its kind in Europe. Here, for the past 25 years, people have been investing in memories. In an area scattered with trenches and tunnels that tell the story of the war between the Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies from 1915 to 1917, the itineraries have been adapted to the new technologies.
Today, this narrative is related with new and yet more engaging words. All you have to do is download the app by scanning one of the many QR codes on the 130 indestructible panels along the route. The extensive work connected with the production and installation of the panels was carried out by the volunteers of the Treviso Section of the ‘Alpini’ Italian Mountain Troops (ANA) and the members of the Cengia Martini-Lagazuoi Committee under the direction of Sergio Furlanetto.
The app remains available even offline, for example in the tunnels, where there is no network signal.
The cable car takes you up to the Lagazuoi EXPO Dolomiti, the starting point of this journey through history. The information panels mark all the significant places of the two routes – along the front line and the Kaiserjäger path - as well as in the tunnels dug into the mountain more than a century ago; the tunnels are more than one kilometre long with a difference in altitude of 600 metres.
Each strategic point along the route is marked with a code; if you enter this on your smartphone, a tab full of content opens up: texts, images, audio and video recordings that explain the lesser-known aspects of the war and offer a lively and impressive insight into the topic. You can walk slowly while listening and learning what this war meant to a generation of young people. The sections that refer to the respective locations - the front line, the ridge emplacements, the Italian barbed wire netting, the mine tunnels, the ridges, the officers' huts and soldiers' dormitories, the observation posts, the deposits - alternate with scenes from the everyday life of the soldiers, so that you learn what life was like at the front, where they had to fight not only the enemy but also cold, fatigue, hunger and fear.
The hike through the trenches and tunnels becomes an even more captivating experience, transformed into a narrative that makes a chapter of history easily understandable.
PRESS OFFICE LAGAZUOI EXPO DOLOMITI_DOC-COM
Ilaria Tortora, ilaria.tortora@doc-com.it, M. +39 345 82 24 264
Sara Degl’Innocenti, sara.deglinnocenti@doc-com.it, M. +39 328 301 9076
T +39 051 5941567 - doc-com.it
