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Asict - The historical iconographic atlas of cities in Tuscany

Asict website is devoted to the historical iconography of cities in Tuscany. The archive collect images dated from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, a long period embracing the re-birth of urban iconography after a long silence and its development during the Renaissance. In the middle of the Eighteenth century, the development of new surveying methods, mainly related to cadastral operations, and the multiplication of guidebooks and tourist materials give urban iconography a new perspective that requires a different approach and evaluation. Not by chance, by that time, the production of a specific editorial genre, the book or theatre of towns, ceases. The images displayed in this website concern only the whole city, and not one single part of it, or single monuments and sights, widely celebrated by travellers' sketches and later by postcards.

Structure and functionalities
The homepage shows the main thematic sections
 * Fortifications
 * Cities and their patron Saints
 * Historical regions
 * Illustrated books
 * Books of cities
 * Mural Cycles
 * Travels and travelers

by clicking on any of the sections a list of the available cities is shown. Each city has a number of entries associated to it, one per each image or work filed.

The website allows users to search the archive in many different ways: An updated cartography of the region, divided into its provinces map of Tuscany is provided to allow users to easily locate the cities
 * basic search, through the general index of cities in the bottom bar
 * advanced search, through the green radials. These sectors are related to different fields within which urban iconography has developed according to different aims and features. Each of them is explained by an introduction, offering specific lines of interpretation
 * search by words, through the button “ricerca” in the button bar and the options displayed

Data format
Each entry provides the images of the work to which refers to, an explanation that provide basic and historical information and related notes, and other useful informations such as bibliography, informations about author, date, technique, location, dimensions and inscriptions.

In each record are present links to aerial views of the city. The aerial views are provided by external services like Bing Maps, Google Maps and Terra Flyer (powered by Regione Toscana). Furthermore is possible to search the city to which the record refers to, into Castore, a website (set up by Regione Toscana) dedicated to historical cadastral maps. Is worth noting that present and historical administrative districts however do not always coincide.

Current status
The website is still "under construction" and not all the sections are opened at the moment, the site is periodically improved and updated. Currently Asict hosts 1082 entries, 1300 images and 872 bibliographical entries.