Romanian museum, the first to use smartphone app for guidance

The Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, in Central Romania, will be the first such institution in the country to allow its visitors to find their way around the museum just by using their smartphones. All they will need to do is to install a smartphone app called I-locate. Some specialists in cultural management nicknamed the app “the art GPS”. “The app has a dual function, is both a “GPS” and a guide inside and outside the museum,” said Raluca Teodorescu, representative of the museum, cited by local Agerpres. The app should be available for free starting September this year, until the end of the project. It will be available in both Romanian and English. According to a statement of the museum, the app will be created with money coming from a EUR 4.7 million European Commission funding. The Brukenthal National Museum was erected in the late 18th century in Sibiu, and housed in the palace of Samuel von Brukenthal, the Habsburg governor of Transylvania. It established its first collections around 1790. The collections were officially opened to the public in 1817, making it the oldest institution of its kind in Romania. Oldest museum in Romania starts petition for first restoration in 200 years Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com