Evaluating the Impact of a Virtual Reality Application in Raising Awareness Toward the Destruction of Cultural Heritage Sites Christos Hadjipanayi 1 , Eleni Demitriadou 1 , Haris Frangou 1 , Maria Papageorgiou 1 , Christina Zavlanou 2 , Andreas Lanitis 2, 3 [0000-0001-6841-8065] 1 Dept. of Multimedia and Graphic Arts, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus. 2 Visual Media Computing Research Lab, Department of Multimedia and Graphic Arts, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus. 3 Research Centre on Interactive Media Smart Systems and Emerging Technologies, Cyprus. christos.hadjipanayi@gmail.com jelenadim1995@gmail.com xarisfrangou@gmail.com papageo.met@gmail.com cg.zavlanou@edu.cut.ac.cy andreas.lanitis@cut.ac.cy Abstract. The aim of our work is to investigate the applicability of Virtual Re- ality (VR) in raising awareness of users in relation to the destruction of im- portant monuments. The proposed methodology involves the exposure of users to three virtual environments displaying the original state of a monument, the current state and the predicted future state of the same monument in the case that the monument is not maintained. The exposure to the three states of the same building allows the user to experience the “glorious days” of a monument and compare them to the current and future states in an attempt to realize the level of destruction that could occur to the building if the monument is not maintained properly. As part of a pilot case study, a number of volunteers were asked to navigate in virtual environments depicting the three chronological states of a landmark building. Preliminary results indicate a significant increase of the intensity of negative emotions of the users, indicating the applicability of VR in alerting the society toward the destruction of important monuments. Keywords: Virtual Reality, Cultural Heritage, Visualization Techniques 1 Introduction Virtual Reality (VR) is defined as "an interactive three-dimensional environment that is created on the computer and in which the user can be immersed" [1]. Recent pro- gress of science and technology resulted in affordable and efficient hardware and tools [2] that enables the design and implementation of engaging applications that can