Urban History Through New Technologies. Visualizing Venice, a Pilot Project

In the digital age even those engaged in the field of urban history are moving in the direction of ICT (Information and Communications Technology), discovering how new research method- ologies can be applied to the study of urban phenomena and how research findings can be made considerably more accessible through new communications systems. Digital technologies are pro- viding new tools for investigation and interpretation, for visualisation, and for synthesising the results of traditional research. New ways of studying how cities change over time and new languages for representing these transformations are being tested by Visualizing Venice . The project’s research methodology has defined a toolkit aimed at interpreting urban dynamics on the basis of archival documents and at making the results of these studies visible though images, video and other multimedia supports. Keywords: Venice, Urban history, Digital Humanities, ICT