Digitizing cultural heritage: methodology, potential, and limits of the Palermo Royal Palace Project

The Royal Palace in Palermo, with its famous Cappella Palatina and the so-called Norman Stanza, is an outstanding, intricate architectural palimpsest. The three-dimensional model of the Palace represents an effective, useful tool, thanks to which a deeper knowledge of the monument arises. Besides a short description of the Royal Palace Project, which includes the trans-disciplinary approach applied to the monument in its complicated architectural history and archaeological stratigraphy, part of this contribution is dedicated to the epistemic rationale of the digital humanities, 3d models and digital tools, exploring potentials, questions and limits deriving from vast amounts of data, with the consequent need for an appropriate, dedicated and permanent management system. Compared to the traditional scientific outcomes represented by definitive publications and books, a never-definitive digital model would represent a dynamic tool, potentially open to an unlimited incrementation of data, and fostering a hermeneutic update and the heuristic upgrade of knowledge of a given cultural heritage monument. This increase of knowledge balances the degree of uncertainty of our working hypotheses and reconstructions, fundamental tools to retrace the diachronic history of a given monument and to recreate a reliable configuration of synchronic spaces and functions.