The goal
Digitalise and showcase books 33–36 of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia — a primary source for the history of art and ancient science — through advanced consultation tools and an updated historical and philological commentary. Build a web platform capable of contextualising the described works geographically, structuring a specialist technical lexicon and making research results accessible to an international multidisciplinary network.
Our response
Build an integrated digital ecosystem on the Muruca platform: an institutional website, a digital library with critical apparatus and specialist commentary, interactive maps and a technical lexicon of ancient art. Ensure the platform’s modularity and scalability, organising content according to Digital Humanities standards and supporting research with semantic navigation tools and dedicated multimedia content.
Muruca and Digital Humanities for classical philology
The site was built on Muruca, the open source framework designed for Digital Humanities, which guarantees modularity and long-term scalability. The platform’s structure organises texts and commentaries on books 33–36 of the Naturalis Historia according to scientific cataloguing standards, integrates interactive maps for the geographical contextualisation of works cited by Pliny, and hosts a bilingual technical lexicon (Greek and Latin) for understanding Plinian artistic and scientific terminology.
A research experience within a classical text
The Oltre Plinio project was born from the need to restore the full historical, literary and artistic complexity of the Plinian text, moving beyond the reductive tradition of mere excerpta. The platform architecture was designed to guide different audiences – philologists, art historians, researchers and students – through distinct and complementary sections: Naturalis Historia, Resources, Activities. The choice of an interface oriented towards academic use ensured legibility, content accessibility and coherence with the project’s scientific identity.
