Abstract

Heritage of different kinds can be difficult in various ways. In this chapter, we focus on those cases where such a difficult nature is chiefly recalled by, is embedded in and results from heritage’s built form. We will call it ‘difficult built heritage’. By adding ‘built’ to ‘difficult heritage’, we intend to place the emphasis precisely on the actual or potential contribution of the physical and material features of some difficult heritage in determining its ‘contentious’ nature (Macdonald 2020). In this chapter, by bringing to bear our backgrounds and expertise as architects, we outline the challenges and opportunities posed by the reuse of ‘difficult built heritage’ once it is reused as a museum, notably questioning the possible contribution – and drawbacks – of digital technologies in such a musealisation process and in defining the visitors’ experience in these museums. In the last twenty years, the number of musealisation projects of difficult heritage sites has been increasing. They variously deploy different curatorial strategies and design solutions, notably including an increase in the use of digital technologies into their exhibition design. It seems important thus to critically assess such a strategy, notably focusing on which contribution digital technologies may bring to the musealisation process, on what their use may allow to do in these sites, and on how their implementation can eventually support these museums in their work. To do so, we will draw on the comparison between two emblematic examples that sit at opposite extremes in the use of digital technologies in their museum and exhibition design: the former Horsens State Penitentiary (Denmark), today hosting the Fængselsmuseet, and the Museo di Storia della Psichiatria in Italy, at the former San Lazzaro Psychiatric Hospital in Reggio Emilia (Italy).