Cultural heritage and storytelling: didactic applications in Trieste with ESRI Story Maps

New mapping technologies available in the cloud computing era are the current challenge for a narrative geography of cultural heritage. The concept of digital storytelling has become reality due to existing webGIS applications. Using available web templates (such as ESRI Story Maps), users can mix narrative text, multimedia content (photos, video, etc.) and interactive web maps without strong GIS or web development skills. Therefore, they are also powerful tools in teaching and learning geography. This paper presents the main results of a didactic experience at the Department of Humanities, University of Trieste (Italy). As a part of this activity, students were given a theoretical framework of the role played by geographical narration to promote cultural heritage. They also had practical experience on GIS and webGIS (namely on ESRI Story Map). Using these skills, students autonomously created different examples of territorial storytelling. For this paper, two storymaps were chosen: the first focuses on the geographical features, legendary and urban impacts of the Bora wind (storymap available at: https://arcg.is/14bDSz); the second is about the troubled history of a fascinating vehicle, the “Tram of Opicina” (storymap available at: https://arcg.is/0DHbje), a tramway line built at the beginning of the last century that connects the town of Trieste and the village of Opicina.