Resources
Assets BHMPI
Knowledge Graph
The Bibliotheca Hertziana publishes a sizable portion of the structured data coming from its digital projects and department holdings into a unique knowledge graph infrastructure that conforms to the Linked Data principles and technologies. {KG}2 (Knowledge Graph | Kunstgeschichte) amasses data and metadata largely from the Library and Photographic Collection, but also re-engineered from long-standing art history catalogues of the institute such as Zuccaro (collating such projects as ArsRoma and Lineamenta), Roma Communis Patria, and Frederick Noack’s card index. It therefore facilitates the linking of art-historical data to bibliographical and iconographical sources. {KG}2 can be queried via the SPARQL language and a bespoke search API, as well as through experimental interfaces, such as a query builder UI and an AI-driven RAG chatbot.
Schemas/ontologies: CIDOC-CRM, LRMoo, Bibframe
Volume: ~340m RDF triples across 8 datasets
Access: https://data.biblhertz.it/ (unified endpoint)
Visual Data
BHMPI Photographic Collection
The Photographic Collection of the Bibliotheca Hertziana comprises mostly images of Italian works of art (paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, buildings etc.). About 460.000 of these have rich metadata. Their rights of use are specified at each photograph’s respective metadata.
Number of images: 1.300.000
Access: https://foto.biblhertz.it/
These images and their metadata are also available and linked with data from several other collections, with AI-enhanced features in the artresearch.net platform by the Pharos Association.
Access: https://artresearch.net/
In addition to the catalog, part of the collection including about 500.000 additional non-catalogued photographs is available with a Navigator app exploiting the structure of the collection to provide access to the assets.
Access: https://nav.biblhertz.it/
Textual Data
Rara Collection
Collection of rare books mostly about Rome (guide books). Rights free, but partially in old Italian or Latin.
Date range: 1480 to ca. 1850.
Number of items: ca. 2.000 vol. (500.000 pages)
Book view & Images: IIIF manifest/viewer
OCR: Page/ALTO XML, JSON, Markdown, or HTML
Access: https://dlib.biblhertz.it
Rome / Naples Collection
Collection of contemporary books specifically about Rome and Naples (Art, Architecture, Topography). Identification of buildings/monuments with Wikidata IDs. Not totally rights-free, therefore mostly data access only.
Date range: from ca. 1900 to 2024
Number of items: ca. 12.000 vol. (3.000.000 pages)
Book view & Images: IIIF manifest/viewer
OCR: Page/ALTO XML
Preferred Format for RAG: Markdown
Access: CouchDB API (List, Sample Doc) with ready Markdown
What about https://dl.humanitiesconnect.pub/?
Web Maps & External Data
DataHub
https://dlib.biblhertz.it/hub
MapBox/OSM based WebMap with access to information about the major art historic monuments in Italy. The system is based on a Wikidata query (running in the background) looking for resources from and linking to:
- Wikipedia (for a short description)
- Photographic Archive of the BHMPI
- Bibliographic research in Kubikat/BHMPI
- Digitized Rare Book collection (ca. 2.000 voll.): full texts
- Digitized Rome and Naples collection of modern books (ca. 12.000 voll.): full texts
- Getty Research Center (Hutzel photographic collection)
- Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione (ICCD): records
- Archivio Fotografico Nazionale: photographs
- Istituto Centrale della Grafica (ICG): prints and drawings
- ArchInform: records
- GeoNames: records
- Wikimedia Commons: photographs
- Wikidata incl. pre-built Graph result
- Arachne (DAI): records
- Census: records
- Pleiades: records
- ToposText: records
The hub collects all available data in realtime, making the use of a user-maintained conversion table unnecessary. The collected data is constantly expanding. The spatial system is point based (from Wikidata) but also polygon based (from OSM). Switching is done by choosing Topo or Modern interfaces.
Coverage: Italy
Features/Assets: 54.000
Urbs
https://dlib.biblhertz.it/urbs
Precursor of “Datahub” (vd supra), exclusively for Rome and with a smaller selection of added resources but with switchable historic maps:
- Governatorato 1935
- Pianta Generale 1888
- Spithoever 1881
- Piano Regolatore 1875
- Censo 1866
- Pietro Ruga 1832
- GB.Nolli 1748
- FormaUrbis
- ArcheoSitar
Coverage: Central Rome
Features/Assets: 1.900
Maps
Cipro
The CIPRO Illustrated Catalogue of the Maps of Rome Online is a database of historical maps of Rome with metadata and high-resolution scans. Rights situation: varying, mostly non-free.
Time frame: ca. 1525 until 1950
Access: https://cipro.biblhertz.it
Library
The library has digitized (high res) and georeferenced about 12 of its more detailed maps and put them available as MapBox style. Rights situation: free.
Time frame: ca. 1740 until 1950
Access: as Mapbox style (tiled) or GeoTIFF for download on request.
External Assets
Census
The Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance holds a database registering antique monuments known in the Renaissance together with the related Renaissance documents in the form of texts and images. More than 200,000 entries contain monuments, pictorial and written documents, locations, persons, concepts of time and style, events, research literature and illustrations. The monuments registered amount to over 10,000, the entries on monuments including all their parts to over 16,000, and the entries on documents to over 38,000.
Access: https://database.census.de or alternatively using the DataHub (vd supra)
Shapefile of Rome
An official shapefile of Rome containing all buildings is available as part of the “Dataset nazionale degli aggregati strutturali italiani” released by the Protezione Civile. The dataset can be used freely under a CC-BY 4.0 licence.
Access: https://github.com/pcm-dpc/DPC-Aggregati-Strutturali-ITI-Centro/tree/master/Centro/Lazio/Roma