Verba APPIA

Audio-only app designed to hear stories and leave messages on the Appian Way

Verba APPIA is an audio-only application designed to plunge users into a universe of localized contents and stories.

Originally designed for the world’s largest archaeological site, the Appian Way running from the Colosseum to the outermost suburbs of Rome, a distance of over 9 kilometres, Verba generates audio stories and localizes them in three-dimensional geographical space.

Using the GPS sensors now included in all smartphones, Verba localizes the user’s position with extreme precision and sends only the contents concerning the area visible from that location to the user’s device. Then the story begins.

As if by magic, the user is surrounded by audio messages, and can choose which type to listen to. History, archaeology, customs, curiosities, surprises…

All this and much much more…

Verba APPIA’s true purpose is to transform relevant places, local areas, into social networks. Like Facebook or Twitter.

Every visitor to the Appian Way can leave a comment, a feeling, an emotion, a state of mind or a suggestion for other visitors. Comments are also localized. They may be public, shared with a group or completely private. This means that messages can be heard only in their vicinity, by those in the same geographical space or immediately next to it.

Verba APPIA disseminates a myriad of messages with a significant cultural and informative content in a vast area of Rome, engaging an international audience and inviting it to participate in this story cloud, to simultaneously use and create content as protagonists of their own experience.

For the first time, cultural heritage of crucial importance to humanity becomes a social network.

For the first time in the history of the world, two thousand years of history, events and stories combine with the impressions and emotions of today’s international visitors.