Post date: Oct 02, 2012 2:50:56 AM
The final goal of the Venice Church Floors project of 2012 is to assist UNESCO in preserving the artifacts in church floors throughout Venice with the creation of a database that can be easily modified to include information about an artifact which can be used to prioritize future restoration efforts.
Over the course of a decade, teams have worked closely with UNESCO and the churches throughout Venice to catalog the floor artifacts. UNESCO started this process in 1968 following the great flood of 1966. The significance of the floor artifacts is the fact that they are the window into the city’s cultural history. Many features of these artifacts are hundreds of years old. The artifacts shear age and location in the floor has made them susceptible to damage from both natural causes and human intervention. Venice is prone to annual flooding, referred to as acqua alta, and is causing damage to the artifacts.
We will be creating a priority list to help UNESCO determine which artifacts deserve preservation. There are over 2200 artifacts within the church floors, and although they are all a part of the city’s history, they cannot all be restored. The location of the artifacts on the church floors causes wear and tear to occur on the artifact’s surfaces. This wear and tear can be prevented, allowing for the artifacts to be viewed by future generations.
In addition to viewing the artifacts, lots of interesting information about Venetian history can be gathered from the text on their surfaces. Many of the tombs have been transcribed to the best of past teams’ abilities. The text on the tombs is written in Latin, the traditional Catholic language. When translated, the information on the tombs can reveal common occupations, causes of death, age of death, and other unique characteristics about a person that otherwise would be unknown. Hopefully at a future date, translation can occur and this information will assist Venetians in learning more about their history. While this is not in the scope of our project, we will make progress toward this occurring.