Most modern museums in the early 21st century aim at something more than a building designed to store and display exhibits and incorporate functions associated with those of cultural centers’. Increasingly their architecture is treated as the preamble of the museum experience, predisposing the visitor for what is going to face during his tour. The issue of the tour at the museum consists the topic of this research.
From public shrines of antiquity to the cabinets of curiosities of Renaissance Italy and from museums | vaults to modern museums | malls, the saunter and the path follow this institution, whatever form it receives throughout the years. The way the movement is defined and organized is the main core that gives form to the buildingand generates the necessary qualities which contribute to the spatial experience of the visitor. However, the museum, beyond the preservation and display of historical evidence, is, now more than ever, a place of encounters, which in relation to the movement formulates the views. The visitor, upon entering the museum, receives a twofold quality and turns into both the viewer and the exhibit at the same time. People’s encounter is characteristic of moving through a public space as well as the main axis of modern exhibition design.
The sense of the promenade makes the museologican narration meaningful. The sense of continuity and the creation of a personal experience is what makes the visitor revive earlier moments of history through a potential process, which is generally called mnemonicity. The path is a component that plays crucial role in the initial planning and architectural design of a museum as it significantly contributes to visitor’s museum experience.
