PACOME

The communal palaces of the Mediterranean, in one comparative atlas

PACOME (Palazzi Comunali del Mediterraneo) studies, with a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the political and urban function of buildings used as seats of government for urban communities across the Mediterranean. The project brings together researchers from different fields — historians, archaeologists, computer scientists — united by the study of medieval buildings, with Avignon Université, Politecnico di Torino, and the University of Bergamo as main partners.

I handled the technological side: a platform, currently a prototype, that lets researchers catalog the various aspects of medieval communal palaces — historical information, cartographic depictions, surveys, 3D reconstructions — and geo-reference them, presenting each building within its spatial context. A public site then lets anyone browse the catalogued palaces with descriptions provided by the researchers, sharing the acquired knowledge with a wider audience.

The platform uses MongoDB to handle heterogeneous data — not every palace has the same information available — with interfaces that adapt to each building’s specific context. An approach I later carried forward and extended in CivicArc, the national census of Italian communal palaces.