Like all ports, Venice has been a crossroads of cultures and people, of languages and writings. This indistinct and silent humanity has left traces of itself all over the city and in particular on the walls, glass, stones and wood of the Doge's Palace, the heart of power of the Serenissima.
The VeLA project aims to give them a voice through the reading and descriptive audio-reading of figurative and alphabetical signs. It is based on a collaborative database of all the graffiti in the Palazzo Ducale since the Middle Ages. This database includes the editing of the texts (compatible with EpiDoc encoding and with alignment on the person's authority files for the most famous characters) in a centralized data entry system with web access, georeferencing (QGIS), survey, historical cartography of the city, three-dimensional image, reading system through the recognition of a QR code of the graffiti in the places of conservation. The design of a unified international survey protocol for operators of restoration sites or researchers is planned, aiming at safeguarding, preserving, in digital format, of graffiti.
