Digital Twins and Virtual Reality in Museum-Oriented Built Heritage: Conservation, Architectural Documentation, and Visitor Experience with Implications for Stone-Built Museums

Museum-oriented built heritage sits at the intersection of conservation, structural assessment, and visitor experience, yet the integration of digital twin (DT) and virtual reality (VR) technologies across these domains has not been mapped as a unified research field. Within this broader interface, stone-built museums are treated as an interpretive lens and application case rather than as the strict scope of the indexed material. This study presents a structured bibliometric science-mapping analysis of 465 peer-reviewed articles retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection (1999–2026) through a four-stage PRISMA-ScR-informed screening protocol, using bibliometrix-based keyword co-occurrence, thematic mapping, and co-citation analysis. Four conceptual clusters emerge: digital documentation and photogrammetric survey; VR, virtual museum, Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM), and emerging digital-twin applications; AR-based museum experience and interpretation; and sustainable heritage tourism and management. Italy (n = 90) and China (n = 85) lead national output; Universidad Politécnica de Valencia is the leading institution (n = 31). A persistent separation between documentation-focused and experience-focused communities is observed. A three-pillar framework linking DT-based structural documentation, immersive visitor experience, and sustainable museum management through Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) interoperability is proposed for empirical validation in stone-built museum case studies.