Trento Ieri Oggi e Domani

The project “Trento, ieri, oggi e domani” (“Trento yesterday, today and Tomorrow”) wants to show, through the use of computer graphics, the evolution of the urban layout of the city of Trento across history. From the technical point of view the development has been done using Google Earth and Google Sketch-Up which have been used respectively to visualize the territory and how this has changed across time, and to create the model of the evolving urban layout.



The historical timeframe addressed by the project covers the period spanning from Roman Trento to modern days and beyond, by showing the future infrastructures already planned for the following years. A particular attention has been paid to the period between the Roman times and the 17th century since during this period there is only a limited amount of significant documents and buildings findings that allowed archeologists and historians to represent the exact evolution of the territory. In fact the possibility to represent the evolution of the city through a GIS database visualized through Google Earth, where information on different ages can be visually overlapped, facilitates the process of evaluation and the creation of working hypothesis.



This approach is very useful in the case of architectural/archeological findings of which there is knowledge but whose spatial dimension is unknown. Most often in this case these finding often coincide with architecture of a great relevance during the 1700s. In fact most prominent buildings, such as churches or palaces, were funded onto pre-existing sites. This is the case for instance of churches which had been funded over places of worship of the Roman times. Most notably this is the case with the church of Saint Vigilio built over the site of an old Roman Temple. Representing the urban arrangement together with the streets layout facilitates the speculation over the evolution of the urban context and it allows theoretically to draw the attention of the scientists towards specific part of the city showing precise patterns where to proceed with further studies.



The main goal of the project is to represent such an urban evolution. On the one hand it makes use of tradition al Computer Graphics for the fruition of architectures, on the other side the project has followed a very scientific approach since the data has been validated and studied with experts in archeology and history. When the environment was built, through a process of synthesis between computer graphics experts and historians, it emerged clearly how the tool could be a valid tool for analysis and synthesis of the archeological data. While the initial hypothesis of the project was to consider only wide historical periods (roman age, 1300, 1500, 1700, 1800) all characterized by the possibility to find documents, throughout time the project has evolved to represent just those period characterized by the scarce availability of information – such as in pre roman times. The system has thus been used as a tool to estimate the process of evolution of the urban layout. Further, while it was originally planned to represent the evolution of few buildings according to large temporal blocks the project has eventually brought to the representation of the evolution of the entire urban context including the evolution of the street, other buildings etc. across time including the major changes brought in the city by the change of the paths of the two city rivers: Fersina and Adige.

Sponsor

• Rotary Club - Trentino Nord, Italy
  
• Provincia Autonoma di Trento, Italy
• Comune di Trento, Italy