CENOBIUM - Putting together the romanesque cloister capitals of the mediterranean region

CENOBIUM (Cultural Electronic Network Online: Binding up Interoperable Usable Multimedia) is a Cultural Heritage project regarding Romanesque cloister capitals from the Mediterranean region. The central aim of this project is to illustrate cultural exchange in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through the example of architectural decoration. In this ambit, three Cloisters have been considered until now; the cloister of Monreale (Sicily), the cloister of Sant'Orso in Aosta and the cloister of Cefalù (Sicily). For the most important capitals of these cloisters several high resolution digital images and highly detailed coloured 3D models have been produced. This big amount of data has been integrated in a web application where, textual descriptions, high resolution images and 3D models can be accessed from the same page for each capital. Moreover, a simple mechanism permits to compare images and models of capitals of any cloister: the user can select them during the exploration, and then a simple tool (called LightTable) can download and visualize them on the computer. In this way, it is possible to compare the selected elements, so that further similarities between them can be found and easily investigated. In conclusion, the CENOBIUM website is a successful integration example of different types of data, in the context of an environment which is devoted not only to the wide public, but also to the community of experts and scholars of the Romanesque art.