Jenny Attiyeh: Cupola Project Seeks To Reclaim Italy's Santa Maria del Fiore Archives
In the early morning of Nov. 4, 1966, while Florence slept, the Arno River, overwhelmed by unprecedented rains, suddenly overflowed its banks and unleashed a lethal mixture of water, mud and debris. The city never had a chance. Its narrow streets served as perfect conduits, leading the river into the heart of Florence.
At 9: 45 a.m., a wall of water six metres high reached the Piazza del Duomo, home to the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the city's most distinctive landmark. It forced its way through the bronze and golden doors of the Baptistery, tore off the marble lid of a Roman sarcophagus, and ripped through the cathedral's administrative archives, which date back to the 14th century. In all, some 6,000 volumes documenting the construction of the cathedral were submerged in mud, rendering large parts of them virtually illegible.
But that was then. Today an international team of scholars, aided by sophisticated imaging technology, is attempting to reclaim these documents and transmit their contents, for free, over the Internet in the form of a vast digital archive.
"These documents are part of a public cultural heritage, of our cultural commons, I would say," said Jurgen Renn, the executive director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and a key collaborator in the effort. "Such floods are warnings to all of us to use all options for preservation that we can think of, and the digital medium is one of those."
Known as "The Years of the Cupola Project," it focuses on all 20,000 documents, covering 1417 to 1436, when the ingenious architect Filippo Brunelleschi planned and constructed the cathedral's famous cupola. Spanning 44 metres of empty air, this octagonal brick dome, ribbed by eight buttresses of marble, is a feat of engineering and artistry, and stands to this day as a symbol of Florence.
"Certainly it's the seminal piece of Renaissance architecture," says Daniel Schodek, a professor of architectural technology at Harvard's Design School. Soaring 90 metres above ground, it was at the time the largest dome in the world.
"It was a pivotal point in the development of architecture," Schodek adds. "But despite all this talk about the building for so many years, relatively little is known about it."
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The "Years of the Cupola Project" is accessible at www.operaduomo.firenze.it/cupola/home_eng.html. Jenny Attiyeh host s ThoughtCast, a podcast and public radio interview program on authors, academics and intellectuals. She lives in Boston and can be reached at jenny @ thoughtcast.org.
At 9: 45 a.m., a wall of water six metres high reached the Piazza del Duomo, home to the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the city's most distinctive landmark. It forced its way through the bronze and golden doors of the Baptistery, tore off the marble lid of a Roman sarcophagus, and ripped through the cathedral's administrative archives, which date back to the 14th century. In all, some 6,000 volumes documenting the construction of the cathedral were submerged in mud, rendering large parts of them virtually illegible.
But that was then. Today an international team of scholars, aided by sophisticated imaging technology, is attempting to reclaim these documents and transmit their contents, for free, over the Internet in the form of a vast digital archive.
"These documents are part of a public cultural heritage, of our cultural commons, I would say," said Jurgen Renn, the executive director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and a key collaborator in the effort. "Such floods are warnings to all of us to use all options for preservation that we can think of, and the digital medium is one of those."
Known as "The Years of the Cupola Project," it focuses on all 20,000 documents, covering 1417 to 1436, when the ingenious architect Filippo Brunelleschi planned and constructed the cathedral's famous cupola. Spanning 44 metres of empty air, this octagonal brick dome, ribbed by eight buttresses of marble, is a feat of engineering and artistry, and stands to this day as a symbol of Florence.
"Certainly it's the seminal piece of Renaissance architecture," says Daniel Schodek, a professor of architectural technology at Harvard's Design School. Soaring 90 metres above ground, it was at the time the largest dome in the world.
"It was a pivotal point in the development of architecture," Schodek adds. "But despite all this talk about the building for so many years, relatively little is known about it."
...
The "Years of the Cupola Project" is accessible at www.operaduomo.firenze.it/cupola/home_eng.html. Jenny Attiyeh host s ThoughtCast, a podcast and public radio interview program on authors, academics and intellectuals. She lives in Boston and can be reached at jenny @ thoughtcast.org.