The Romanesque Cathedral and Town of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia (Spain), ca. 1211: A Real-Time Virtual Reality Reconstruction

UCLA College of Letters and Science, Humanities Division

Primary contact

John Dagenais
Professor
Spanish & Portuguese
(310) 825-1220
dagenais@humnet.ucla.edu

Project URL

www.humnet.ucla.edu/santiago/iagohome.html
www.etc.ucla.edu/research/projects/compostela.htm

Additional project researchers

José Suárez Otero, S.A. de Xestión do Plan Xacobeo, Xunta de Galicia, Spain

Project description

Santiago de Compostela is one of the great pilgrimage basilicas of Europe. UCLA Professor John Dagenais both developed a website for use in an introductory course in Medieval Spanish literature and initiated a virtual reconstruction of the cathedral as an ongoing research project for students in a summer-session class studying and traveling the pilgrimage route. The computer model shows the building as it appeared when dedicated by Bishop Pedro Muñoz on April 3, 1211 A.D. The model also features embedded spatialized songs and sounds to recreate the experience of the building in the thirteenth century.

The course website is hosted by the UCLA Center for Digital Humanities. The reconstruction model was developed in conjunction with UCLA's Academic Technology Services and Experiential Technologies Center (and its predecessor, the Cultural VR Lab).

Project video