GeoCensus

The BBAW’s project of the month:
Integration of digital and georeferenced map data

The Telota-Project of February 2006 made a new access possible for a section of the Census data. Practically all of the approximately 1300 locations listed in the database representing actual or historical whereabouts of antique monuments were equipped with georeferenced data and visualized using google’s freely available map data.

The text and image entries of antique monuments linked with these locations can be consulted by mouse click. Also the entries of the so-called Renaissance provenance, that is, the information on the changes in location of antique sculptures, can be requested.

To the interested amateur the visualisation of the georeferenced CENSUS locations on digital maps offers a simple and intuitional access which - unlike the traditional search in the database via queries of technical terms - enables him/her to get information without concrete background knowledge.

To archaeologists or art historians working in the field of the reception of the antiquity, the concentration of registered locations in the City of Rome offers new perspectives for research on the fate of “mobile” antique monuments in the Renaissance. Sculptures, today spread world-wide in museums and collections, can be accurately traced back to their finding places and the attendant circumstances. It is very easy to keep track of the excavation sites in Rome in the 16^th century which are often tantamount to the locations of the construction projects of villas and palaces, orchards and vineyards. Research on the history especially of private collections of antique works can release a new impulse by mapping the manifold and disparate, often also unclear information concerning the whereabouts of the monuments in different families, buildings or times.

Access to the GeoCensus