Vatican Museums: creating safe spaces for art

A unique place in the world, with singular safety challenges

A few steps from St Peter’s Dome, the Vatican Museums form Italy’s largest museum complex and the fifth largest in the world by area. Tens of millions of visitors each year can admire around 20,000 artworks, just 30% of the collection, which spans Egyptian, Etruscan, and Roman art, works by twentieth-century artists such as Vincent van Gogh or Pablo Picasso, and masterpieces by Renaissance and Baroque figures including Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Giotto, and Caravaggio.

The museum’s safety teams needed to integrate and modernise the numerous systems for environmental monitoring, security, and visitor control/information that protect the 70,000 artworks in the collection, while also managing the optimal flow and safety of 20 million annual visitors across 43,000 square metres of visitable space, always respecting the historic and artistic value of the site.

The project also included creating and deploying a digitalisation platform ready to be licensed to museums around the world.

Extraordinary measures for extraordinary needs

Our expert Smart Security and Smart Tourism team, with extensive experience in the digital transformation of high-traffic museums, was selected as the partner for this challenge.

During the project:

• We implemented a 20-kilometre fibre-optic network connecting all systems

• We installed and now manage environmental sensors and people-flow control sensors
• We integrated advanced video surveillance systems
• We integrated advanced fire-prevention and evacuation systems
• We created Integra Museum, a platform with IoT, Big Data, and artificial intelligence capabilities to digitalise, monitor, and automate surveillance, safety, and visitor-flow management in any museum space worldwide

Among the results achieved:

• Significant improvements in visitor safety and artwork protection
• Optimised management of visitor flows, avoiding overcrowding and improving the visitor experience
• Immediate alerting and diagnosis of any type of incident
• Visitor information and orderly evacuation management in any emergency situation

The success of the project has positioned the Vatican Museums as a global reference in Safety & Security.

A trusted partner for protecting people and cultural heritage

Projects such as this integrated Safety & Security platform for the Vatican Museums, scalable to museum spaces of any size, demonstrate Minsait’s ability to tackle complex challenges at the intersection of technology, tourism, and culture. This challenge enabled us to apply our expertise in:

• Integrating complex systems to protect and manage spaces of historic and cultural value
• Applying advanced technologies to enhance safety and visitor experience
• Developing tailored solutions for the needs of cultural institutions worldwide

Il successo nei Musei Vaticani posiziona Minsait come partner affidabile per la trasformazione digitale di spazi culturali e artistici in tutto il mondo, mettendo la tecnologia più avanzata al servizio della preservazione del patrimonio.