# Augmented Reality in Cultural Heritage: An Overview of the Last Decade of Applications
## 3 Top Trending Applications of AR in Cultural Heritage
### Tourism  
The potential of MR technology in tourism was increasingly exploited in the last decade, due to the growing accessibility of the latest technology for 3D heritage content creation, visualization, and interactive dissemination, both in public edutainment environments and in academic/research units. With predecessors such as Rome Reborn [113; 114] and Ancient Miletus [115], Archeoguide [116] is one of the first AR-based cultural heritage projects that highlighted the influence that AR technology can instill in empowering tourism in Greece at the beginning of the 21 st century and has not stopped inspiring since. No matter which visualization solution is implemented, CAVE-based [117] with the promise of group-oriented virtual visits or HMD-based [118] with increasing quality of user-immersion or large visual displays [119] installed inside a museum, the challenges the technology had to face regarding tourist satisfaction in using the system were strongly linked with the cultural experience [87]. Studying the impact virtual reality technologies may have on tourism activities, [PERSON] et al. [118] proved that although a strong emotional user involvement is triggered by a virtual reality-based experience with great perceived visual appeal, the impact on the behavioral intentions to visit a cultural heritage site was not as positive as expected [118]. The authors warn that their study was realized on a single virtual tourism site, so a generalization of their results cannot be made. However, they appreciate the marketing potential posed by the VR experience, due to the emotional implications of users' experience which translates into the propagation of positive impressions to other potential users. The biggest step from CAVE or large display-based public VR systems was made once the mobile devices became powerful enough in order to be more than displaying devices [103]. Moreover, VR-oriented solutions started to be replaced with AR hand-held solutions as a new way to enhance user satisfaction while still preserving the cultural heritage and being able to offer a user-adapted learning experience [84]. In [120], the effect of cultural influences on the acceptance or adoption of AR applications is assessed in a study involving participants from the Republic of South Korea and from the Republic of Ireland. The aesthetics of AR is found to have a strong positive influence on the perceived usefulness, the perceived ease of use, and the perceived enjoyment of AR, in both countries. A VR/AR multimodal application dedicated to the cultural heritage monument Jeju Island of South Korea is described in detail in [121]. A virtual assistant helps the user navigate the heritage site, while full immersion is made possible by the use of the Google Cardboard VR headset, and AR visualization and virtual handling of artifacts is also made possible by the application. Several hypotheses are expressed, in the framework provided by the Technology Acceptance Model, and verified in a user-based study involving 251 users which found that the hedonic characteristics of the application prevail over other utility-related features. Cultural heritage valorization by means of a wearable AR project set in an art museum context is the object of study in [99]. As wearable gear, the Google Glass is considered, and the study performs a comparison of two samples, Google Glass wearers and a control group, with respect to learning outcomes, enjoyment, and influence on future behavior. The control group showed slightly greater knowledge gain than the participants in the wearable AI application, who were distracted more by the novelty of the application and did not focus as well on the learning experience. On the other hand, Google Glass wearers had better and faster access to a greater quantity of information, in a seamless fashion. Social isolation was reported as a downside of using the AR solution. Smart glasses are used within another AR application in an art museum setting in [85].