Pianosa Island (IT)

Inhabited since the Paleolithic in Roman times, it was known by the ancient name of “Planasia”, meaning “flat”, and had already been used as a place of detention, where Agrippa Postumus was exiled and killed, from whom the villa located less one km from the town, called the “Roman Villa”.

Other illustrious people passed and stayed in Pianosa, one above all, Napoleon Bonaparte who in 1814 colonized the island by building a barracks which today is known as “Forte Teglia”.

In 1858 the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, therefore before the birth of the Kingdom of Italy, converted the island into an “agricultural penal colony” for minors, where the prisoners served their sentences by working in the fields, then after the birth of the Kingdom of Italy minors were replaced with adults, and so it remained until the 70s of the last century, and subsequently various mafiosi.

Subsequently, in 1998 the prison was closed and the island was entirely evacuated, and the residents of the town were relocated to other places in Italy, effectively transforming the town of Pianosa into a ghost town!

The presence of a prison for over a century and a half and the creation of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park in 1996 meant that a unique and uncontaminated ecosystem was preserved, which is still protected by limiting the number of daily visitors.

The pristine ecosystem has meant that the island of Pianosa has become a unique place on the planet, and as such needs to be protected.

The project

The association for the defense of the island of Pianosa ODVhas been active since 1995 in safeguarding not only the current island, but above all the historical memory of a place which, having been uninhabited for dozens of years, risks losing it over time.

Furthermore, the abandoned town does not have any type of maintenance, so it is subject to deterioration and collapse.

With this in mind, we were asked to take care of the part relating to the creation of Street Views and above all of a virtual tour that helps to describe the island and the permanent exhibition that preserves its memory, together with “capturing” a flash of the state current of the country, as an eternal memory.

The execution

We carried out two different interventions, the first mapping the streets of the village and the road that leads to the remains of Agrippa’s Villa, captured thanks to our special TrekPackPro equipped with 11k Street View cameras.

The Street View thus obtained was uploaded to Google Maps and Mapillary for greater sharing, and also included in the virtual tour of the island.

As regards the virtual tour, however, a series of 360° drone images were created, which describe the territory, and which, combined with the images created with the DSLR of the exhibition, create the virtual tour of the island which will be included in the new association website.