MAGIS Brugge: Marcus Gheeraerts Information System, a dynamic digital interface for the history of Bruges.

MAGIS Brugge (MAGIC Bruges) is a multidisciplinary research project which focuses on the well-known 16th-century bird-eye view of the city of Bruges, engraved by Marcus Gheeraerts. At a first stage, the complex cartographic content of the 16th-century map will be analysed profoundly by means of a recently developed digital research method, the digital thematic deconstruction. Secondly, the thousands and thousands of cartographic elements discovered on the map will be linked to a topographic database and a GIS, which both will be developed into a dynamic tool and interface for the history of Bruges. It will allow scholars to visualise topographic elements, to make historical reconstruction maps and to renew/proceed the study of the urban topography, town development, segregation patterns, socio-economic trends, etc. of late medieval and early modern Bruges. The partners involved in MAGIS Brugge will submit a new project in order to remodel the cartographic analysis and database into a public-friendly application, which will be presented in Musea Bruges and through a web-application.

Keywords:Urban history, Digital humanities, Early modern history, Cartography, Urban space

Disciplines:History