2026 International Congress of CIRICE
University of Naples Federico II
(Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca sull’Iconografia della Città Europea)

TRANSITION CITIES
Digital Humanities for Knowledge, Conservation, and Enhancement of Urban Heritage
Naples, June 11-13, 2026

Session C.1., The Middle Ages and the Digital Humanities: Understanding the Past, Narrating the Present
Co-organized by Caroline Bruzelius, Sarah Kozlowski, Paola Vitolo (paola.vitolounina.it, antonella.dentamarounina.it)

The acceleration of urban growth processes compels us to confront the challenges of transition. Today, more than ever, we must ask how cities can reconcile the demands of change with the safeguarding of cultural heritage. The survival of the imago urbis depends on the adaptability of knowledge systems and on the critical interpretation of the traces embedded in the landscape. The increasingly interdisciplinary nature of research encourages dialectical inquiry and the shared application of digital tools and methods drawn from historiography, representation, and the conservation of urban and landscape memory. CIRICE 2026 aims to offer a collective moment of reflection on the relationship between political and cultural choices and their impact on the structure, the image, and the future of cities.

During the Middle Ages, many urban centers, monumental complexes, communities, and institutional entities took physical shape in the built environment. However, over the course of time, campaigns of restoration, reconstruction, and reuse have transformed this material heritage, reconfiguring and repurposing spaces, reshaping decorative and iconographic programs, and reorienting relationships between monuments and surrounding urban and natural landscapes. In this process, material traces of the past are sometimes erased altogether, and sometimes “absorbed” into the physical evolution of the built environment, forming part of the rich and complex stratigraphy of our historic centers. In both cases, it can be challenging to interpret the surviving physical and documentary evidence, and even more challenging to narrate such complex histories of the material past. In recent decades, art historians have used digital technologies in various ways and on a range of scales to understand and reconstruct the earlier forms of monuments and the built environment, whether extant or lost, as well as to communicate the material past in ways that are intuitive, effective, and scientifically grounded. This work has allowed scholars to test and refine working hypotheses; at the same time, it has allowed communities to reengage with significant aspects of their own cultural memory and identity.

Taking as a point of departure their experience leading The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database, the chairs of this session aim to bring together for discussion projects in the field of art history that use digital technologies to document, interpret, and/or reconstruct medieval monuments and sites. The chairs welcome presentations on projects that represent a range of geographies (including Italy, Europe, and the Mediterranean), art historical problems, and methodological approaches, and that shed light on projects’ scopes, working methods, technologies, and strategies for communicating research and engaging audiences.

Deadline for abstract submission: 15 September 2025
Submission of abstract at: https://forms.gle/gwaQiFHkm8ZTiSS68

Full list of sessions: https://www.iconografiacittaeuropea.unina.it/cms/cirice-2026/

Congress deadlines, instructions for registration and registration fees: https://www.iconografiacittaeuropea.unina.it/cms/cirice-2026-deadline/