DCU researcher contributes to new interactive app offering historical tours of Venice
A new smartphone app will offer users character driven narrative tours of the floating city, including one following the captain of Venice’s ‘vice squad’ written by Dr Celeste McNamara from the School of History and Geography.
The tour, titled ‘Venice Unmasked’, presents a fictionalised account of a real 18th criminal investigation led by Capitano Zuanne Biancafior, a real historical figure. Users follow the clues with Capitano Biancafior, from the church of the Carmelites to Piazza San Marco, and discover a city struggling to contain a libertine culture of gambling, seduction, and Carnival excess. The content of the tour is grounded in research conducted by Dr McNamara.
Dr Celeste McNamara said:
“In ‘Venice Unmasked’ you get to join a captain of the 'vice squad' to track down a so-called libertine who's been haunting the city's churches - supposedly safe places - in order to sexually harass women. What I wanted to do over a number of sites was explore Venice in this era, bring to the surface its deep contradictions and tensions, and show how the government handled the apparently timeless problem of predatory men who seemed to believe they could act with impunity.”
‘Venice Unmasked’ is one of three first-person stories drawn from key moments across the 16th-to-18th centuries. Each offers the user the chance to experience the lived history of the narrator. In ‘Boatmakers, Bridges, and Battles’, users follow a young shipbuilding apprentice from the Arsenale. In ‘City of Refuge’, users are introduced to the migrant communities of the Castello district in the 16th Century.
The app also offers an alternative to Google Maps for users looking to navigate Venice in a more historically immersive way. It superimposes a map created by 18th-century cartographer Ludovico Ughi onto present day Venice, creating an interactive resource that can be used to navigate the city.
The smartphone app – which can be downloaded for free – is the latest in the acclaimed HistoryCity series, led by historians in the Department of Languages, Cultures and Visual Studies at the University of Exeter. For this project, they have collaborated closely with counterparts at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities.
HistoryCity is a publicly funded project. Apps include Hidden: Valencia, Florence, Exeter, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Deventer, Trento, Tours, and Landshut. Upcoming releases this year include a new trail for Hidden Trento, set in 1943, that addresses the Second World War and Fascism in Italy. All apps are free from the App Store and Google Play.