A Next Generation Virtual Museum Event (NGVME) was planned by V-MUST.NET since the beginning as a final event to be organised at the end of the project. It would have been created as to disseminate the methodology and tools of the network through an exhibition, together with workshops and tutorials and to reache out primarily to the museum community and its visitors, but also to the research community involved in Virtual Museums (that will continue to develop new approaches and solutions), to the industry (that needs to implement this next generation of virtual museums), to the tourism and city marketing organisations (that promote the physical museums or the cities and sites that are represented by virtual museums) and to the wider cultural heritage community. The exhibition was planned to show the power of an integrated approach of virtual museums and demonstrate the concept of re-use, exchange and local integration of virtual museum content, while the workshops and tutorials focused on the different aspects of this approach for different target groups.

In 2013 the consortium has started to plan the NGVME as a frame including:

• a physical exhibition to be set up in 4 different museums, named “Keys to Rome”

• a temporary and moving expo, named “Digital Museum Expo”

• a series of seminars and workshops, organised within the “Digital Museum Expo” and the “Virtual Museum Academy”

• training activities, organised within the Italian Virtual Heritage School, named “Interactive Museum Program”

The exhibition was planned as the real core of the entire V-MUST.NET project, as a highly innovative and interactive exhibition about Roman culture to be shown online and in four locations:

• at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam;

• at the Museum of Imperial Fora (Museo dei Fori Imperiali, Mercati di Traiano) in Rome;

• at the newly restored Sarajevo City Hall and after the first month at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo;

• at the Museum of Antiquities of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.

The partners, that hosted this exhibition, have also integrated their local Roman objects into the exhibition, demonstrating the flexibility and re-use of created VR content. This exhibition has been developed during the entire project. It has inlcuded interactive and interconnected exhibits and case studies. This interactive exhibition has acted not only as the final event of the funded period of V-MusT.net, hence focused on all researchers involved in Virtual Museums, but targeted also the museum and cultural heritage world, the political, scientific and educational world, and finally also the general public, that have visited these physical exhibitions.