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Introduction

For groups and social units, as well as for individuals, the need to safeguard the evidence of their own history and real life comes out with particular strength in phases of profound transformation.
In these last years Turin had a leading part in a radical, economic, social, cultural and generational change. This is also changing the look of the city significantly and at this stage it is important to safeguard and signal with force some places connected to its civil identity: those of the underground resistance against the Nazi-fascist occupation, those of the persecution and deportation in the concentration camps.
In this way, fragments of history hidden in a building, in a part of the city structure, are brought to light and offered not only to those who have consciousness and memory, but most of all to all those, who do not have this because of their age and origin.

Turin is from time immemorial a city-laboratory and this nature made us experiment with a new model of relation between those monuments of our collective memory and the new generations. A new relation that becomes a necessity in a history that is loosing the last witnesses of facts, hopes and horrors, which happened less than 70 years ago and are already vanishing.

Since years, the Turin project of a museum dedicated to the themes of the Second World War and its consequences started exactly from a reflection on the places of memory and on how these places could form Ðrather than a more conventionally museum modality- the cornerstone for the building of a course of reflection and knowledge: a strong bond with the territory in order to recover its memory and to stimulate a wider reflection on the historical scene of reference. In addition to this comes the effort to combine the social function of history and the dynamics of interaction through the use in the mounting of the potentials of technologies and new languages.

During these last months, thanks to the commitment of Acmos, a further enhancement of the places of our territory connected to the memory of the Second World War has been possible. Therefore, this aspect is today one of the basic commitments and becomes a concrete reality in the realization of new equipment of urban and on-line signposts referred to the period 1938/48, which make the places themselves really interactive and participatory.

This project was born with the perspective of widening the Turin experience (http://memoria.acmos.net), which aims to the creation of a European social memory that may remain intact at the passing of time. In this Geoblog everyone can explore and test the idea of a united Europe in languages with the sensibility of the new medias. We want this experimentation to be at the centre of a reflection on the relation between history and memory and the role of the new languages in the spreading and participation in the joint building of the memory. Different categories of users can participate to this geoblog: institutions, such as museums, universities, foundations; NGO, schools and associations; all internet users. The intention is to create a network between museums and institutions, which promotes exchange, debate and common planning.