===== Introduction =====

==== General overview ====

SANCTUARIA is a digital tool developed within Work Package 6 (WP6) of the ITSERR project – Italian Strengthening of the ESFRI RI RESILIENCE.

The platform is designed as a specialized search engine dedicated to the collection, analysis, and geolocation of foundation legends and ex-voto related to sanctuaries located across the Italian territory.

The main objective of SANCTUARIA is to support religious, historical, and art-historical research through an interactive and semantic platform capable of correlating sources, places, dates, and represented subjects.  
The system provides an advanced scientific consultation environment, enabling structured exploration of heterogeneous cultural and religious data.

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==== Research and data exploration approach ====

SANCTUARIA supports both semantic search and exact keyword-based search.

Semantic search allows users to retrieve results based on the meaning and contextual relationships of terms, rather than exact textual matches.  
Exact search, instead, enables precise retrieval based on specific keywords entered by the user.

The platform integrates interactive geographic visualization tools, allowing results to be displayed on a map and analyzed according to their spatial distribution.

In addition, SANCTUARIA includes data export functionalities and supports the creation of new resources by authenticated users, ensuring both open consultation and controlled data enrichment within the research ecosystem.