Piacenza in the 1500s is multimedia and accessible to everyone: Poli and Stucchi present the project at PalabancaEventi

The Piacenza of the Farnese familydesigned by Paolo Bolzoni in a map from 1571, it becomes multimedia and interactive, available to the general public. The evocative project, edited by Valeria Poli And Marco Stucchiwill be presented by the two authors on Monday 22 April at the PalabancaEventi at 6pm. An initiative that sees Banca di Piacenza and the Piacenza and Vigevano Foundation at the forefront in promoting knowledge of the city’s historical and artistic heritage, explains a note from the organisers.

From Piacenza to Caprarola

Everything is born on the occasion of the studies carried out for the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the Basilica of Santa Maria di Campagna, when the Bank of Piacenza commissioned a systematic investigation of the documentation referring to the same period in which the church was built. Of particular interest were two iconographic sources created by Paolo Bolzoni. The two works, unknown to the general public, were created in the early 1670s: the perspective planimetric map of the city of Piacenza was engraved in 1571; while the perspective was frescoed in the Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola (Viterbo) in 1573.

Digital project

Translation of the Bolzoni map in a multimedia version – thanks to the availability of the entrepreneur Franco Spaggiari, owner of the document made available to scholars – started from an accurate digitization by Marco Stucchi; an operation that made it possible to have a very detailed image, necessary for the subsequent analysis and processing phases. This very high definition made it a fundamental iconographic document to integrate Valeria Poli’s historical-documentary research for the reconstruction of the Farnese city of the 16th century.

The mother plant

The map in the following centuries it was considered a unique document, so much so that it was defined as a “mother plant”, an obligatory reference for the printed production of the bird’s eye engravings of Piacenza between 1600 and 1700, characterized, however, by arbitrary reconstructions of the urban consistency. The multimedia project now allows us to move on to an interactive form, making the information available in a popular form, thanks to publication on institutional sites (of the sponsors, the owner and the authors), with the possibility of choosing different levels of investigation: the fortified system , the reading of the urban fabric and monumental emergencies, distinguishing, for example, the disappeared religious heritage from the existing one.

All the info

Monday April 22nd, entry to the PalabancaEventi in via Mazzini, to attend the presentation of the multimedia project by Poli e Stucchi in the Sala Panini at 6 pm, is permitted upon registration by sending an email to [email protected]; or by calling 0523 542441 (Monday to Friday, 9am-1pm and 3pm-5pm).