We open the doors of the Renaissance monuments in Southern Italy and the Islands
The Southern Renaissance presents a rich but still little-known heritage, which awaits to be rediscovered and exploited in its potential.
ANTONELLO reveals and makes accessible the historical-artistic and architectural heritage created between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries scattered throughout the cities and multiple centres of Southern Italy and the Islands, allowing you to visit churches, castles, palaces, which in many cases are closed to the public or difficult to access.
ANTONELLO derives its name from three key figures of the Renaissance in southern Italy: the painter Antonello da Messina, the sculptor Antonello Gagini, and the prince of Salerno Antonello Sanseverino. The biographies and works of the three Antonellos bring out artistic and cultural connections between different centers in the South and the islands, within the broader context of the rest of Italy and Europe.
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Like an airbnb of monuments, ANTONELLO connects potential visitors (tourists, researchers, citizens) with the institutions and local communities of the southern centres, allowing to book with a simple click the opening of a site or monument and possibly also a guided tour. At the same time, it provides synthetic but scientifically reliable and updated information on the sites, monuments and objects surveyed. In this way, ANTONELLO guarantees, on the one hand, the openness of the sites and, on the other, makes the monuments potential engines of local growth, even in the inner areas which are not usually part of traditional tourist routes.
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ANTONELLO derives from the collaboration between four universities (Naples Federico II, Messina, Palermo and Cagliari) with the local communities of Southern Italy, and is part of a Research Project of National Interest (PRIN) Renaissance in Southern Italy and the Islands: Cultural Heritage and Technology (2019-2023). It is also based on years of research on the Southern Renaissance heritage conducted in the field as part of the HistAntArtSI project (www.histantartsi.eu) funded by the European Research Council.
Relying on the expertise of an interdisciplinary team made up of historians, art and architectural historians, archaeologists and experts in literature, ANTONELLO surveys, collects, describes and coordinates access to over 600 points of interest.
ANTONELLO offers:
• the possibility of booking access and guided tours to the sites
• direct contact with the site managers
• brief, but updated and scientifically reliable information on the sites, monuments and objects
• thematic itineraries
• indication of other related sites that can be visited
• other experiences in the area
• possibility of further research in the area
How does ANTONELLO work?
• Quick selection of sites that can be visited via scroll-down list or geo-referenced map
• Access reservation with one click
• Instant booking notification
The webapp provides tools to optimize flows of visitors according to a flexible calendar and a system to book visits and guides totally entrusted to local representatives.
There is also space for the indication of accommodation, catering and tourist experiences to offer users a service in line with modern standards and a wider economic impact on the territory.
A replicable model
The ANTONELLO Team also proposes a participatory and bottom-up valorization model, which responds to the need for resources for the Italian artistic and cultural heritage. The project aims to make its contribution to identifying a path for the valorisation of the Italian artistic and cultural heritage by encouraging the collaboration between scientific researchers and onsite work promoted by citizens, which should be regarded as the main tutors of the local cultural heritage.