Creating Cultural Experiences in a Cemetery: A Storyboard for a VR User Interaction

There is an increasing need to promote and disseminate cultural heritage. Tourism explores cultural heritage in many different contexts. However, in cemetery tourism, the approaches are scarce. Thus, a cemetery needs to be seen and also accepted as art, culture, and knowledge. This paper aims to present a pilot study to develop a VR-based experience, mainly considering the storytelling and storyboards as core factors for increasing user experience in cemetery tourism. Also, it aims to promote cemetery tourism as an important role in showing the history of a nation. For that, the Mausoleum of the Palmela’s Dukes, the biggest private mausoleum in Europe, in Prazeres Cemetery, Lisbon, will be used as an intervention place. Combining cultural heritage and the Palmela’s family history presented there with the creation of a virtual reality experience will give the users a unique cultural experience. Our research methodology comprises an analysis of guided visits to Prazeres Cemetery and the Mausoleum, a semi-structured interview, a qualitative analysis, and bibliographical research. All the information collected allowed us to develop a storytelling proposal that set the base for the storyboard, developed to be used for the VR experience.