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We have arrived at a time for deepening the scholarly analysis of documents that validate and/or reveal urban circumstances. Traditional methodologies of architectural and urban history must remain the foundation of digital approaches because the study of a city will always necessitate scholarly decryption of information and visual sources that connect them to their broader context. For this reason, iconographic and textual documents in archives and libraries – primary data of exceptional value not only from an historical point of view, but also for interpretative inflections – can now be embedded as a part of the new scientificmethodological practice that digital applications offer.DOI: https://doi.org/10.20365/DISEGNARECON.21.2018.ED

A contemporary city representation talks not only about architecture and landscape but also about the effects that political institutions, cultural traditions and economic enterprises have on the urban community. Methods and ways traditionally used to present the complexity and, at the same time, the personality of a town, or on a smaller scale of one of his monument, are not suitable with the contemporary reality. A very famous panel presented at Venice Biennale in 1976, Aldo Rossi’s «Città Analoga», within real and ideal architectures, ancient monuments and contemporary landscapes, individual and collective memories, human presences and empty spaces, can be taken as an example for the preparation of a new ‘story’ or a new ‘map’ for a city like Venice. The space of a digital model can become a place for discussion and analysis, a place where to see together historical records and projects never realized, where to put subjective and objective visions, which overlap daily and occasional tracks.