Two and a half centuries ago, strolling through the streets of Rome or a Venetian piazza, you might happen upon a peculiar type of street vendor, often accompanied by an organ grinder, who for a few pennies offered the chance to observe the wonders of the “new world.” How? Through the magic lantern he carried on his shoulder, an optical device that allowed one to travel while remaining still, and to reach distant palaces and temples, wild forests and endless plains, or even the stars and the moon. The magic lantern is but one of the many devices that in some way “anticipated” cinema and which we can now look at as phenomena that helped define the concept of virtual reality. A concept linked as much to the simulation of reality as to the conscious abandonment to the deception of shadows and their mystery. “The curious machines we present here belong to a minor history compared to the history of art, culture, and technology, ingeniously constructed as they are to play with shadows and reflections and deceive the senses, confuse but also stimulate the minds of those who use them.”