Sacred Spaces in Medieval Southern Italy

Elisabetta Scirocco

The perceptive dimension of the sacred in its historical setting was generated by experiences based on the inclusion and exclusion of different actors from sites of the holy through barriers, screens, and curtains, and on the interplay of ritual and devotional practices with materials, images, colors, and light. Because most of these elements are today lost or de-contextualized, medieval architecture has become hardly readable in its original outline. This research project is dedicated to material evidence related to sacred spaces and monumental liturgical furnishings in Southern Italy between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries. Based on historical reconstructions and using digital technologies for recreating medieval liturgical spaces and furnishings in their synchronic dimension, this research aims to contribute to the understanding of the physical, performative, and symbolic aspects of sacred spaces in the medieval Mediterranean. The digital component of the project is conceived both as a tool for research and as a medium- and long-term result. Although it has become customary to map historical spaces and to model reconstructive hypotheses of lost objects, these practices are adopted and tested primarily because of their heuristic potential. In addition to photo campaigns, the realization of 3D reproductions (e.g., photogrammetry) of the artifacts under study has been undertaken, for the purposes of documentation but also for testing the epistemological potential of digital twins. The discussion on the status of virtual reconstructions for the study of pre-modern built environments has been advanced (through a series of workshops) in dialogue with other institutions and specialists.