Geo-graphica. The visual representation of urban identity evolution: maps and visual artefacts as historical knowledge machines.

The identity of urban space is built thanks to complex sedimentation of antithetic phenomena. On the one hand, the planned activities of politicians, planners and architects aimed to design both the spatial and the social structure of a community. On the other side, it is the results of a human appropriation that dynamically changes and overwrites the built images. At the same time in the historical evolution of a city is an intertwinement both public and private, collective and individual lives. Historical maps together with the official and spontaneous production of multimodal artifacts connected with space – such as paintings, sketches, photographs, and so on – are valuable tools to tell the story and the urban evolution of a place. Furthermore, digital technologies and the possibility of geo-referencing documents offer a common platform to share knowledge and historical insights. The paper proposes and discusses a critical review of the most recent approaches and best practices in the field of historical-visual representation of digitised documental sources contextualized in the evolution both historical and cartographic of a territory.