Online Gazetteer of Sixteenth Century Florence

A searchable gazetteer of 16th c. Florence to accompany an electronic publication about renaissance Florence

R. Burr Litchfield has been researching the transition of Florentine civil society of the Republic to the court society of the Medici Grand Duchy as seen through the prism of the changing urban social geography, and has publishing a digital book on the subject, Florence Ducal Capital, 1530-1630. The book will contains links to a website showing the geographical details under discussion. The website, which is based on the 1594 edition of the Buonsignori map of Florence, also functions as a standalone resource to the geography and features of 16th c. Florence.

STG designed and implemented the searchable gazetteer, basiing it on digital photographs of the Buonsignori map of Florence, and implemented map viewing software to facilitate navigation. We developed a database to manage salient information on features of the city, which also served as the infrastructure for the information displayed on the website. This work was done before mapping and georeferencing was available on common platforms, such as Google Maps.

Online Gazetteer of Sixteenth Century Florence is a project of the History Department.

Contributors to this project include Kerri Hicks (STG), R. Burr Litchfield (Faculty lead)