A virtual journey through the viridade of the Santo Domingo Monastery in Lima reveals the hidden history of 17th-century azulejos, the work of restorers and the forgotten story written in the ceramic tiles.
- Implementation period: 2022-2024
- Programme / funding: Ministry of Education and Science
- Our role: multimedia and research implementer
- Project page: https://santo-domingo.online
Payable from the funds of the Ministry of Education and Science within the framework of the task "Internationalisation of research conducted by the Archaeological Stations of the University of Warsaw" on the basis of contract No. 54/D353/2021 of 22.11.2021, task No. 14 in the amount of PLN 63,800.
Research at the Santo Domingo Monastery in Lima (Peru) has revealed not only the extraordinary wealth of ceramic decoration made from thousands of azulejos tiles, but also the complex history of the depictions of almost sixty saints and figures of merit to the Church. Numerous earthquakes and subsequent reconstructions of the monastery have led to secondary, often erroneous reconstructions of the decorations - parts of the images have been displaced and the original visual narrative has been obliterated. Thanks to painstaking conservation research, it has been possible to reconstruct the original arrangement of the tiles and the meaning of the story written on the walls of the cloister.
Since it is not possible to intervene in the entirety of the historic decoration, it was natural to recreate it in a virtual space. The project allows us to see the saints as they were perceived by the inhabitants of Lima at the beginning of the 17th century, while at the same time inviting us to reflect on whether the contemporary viewer is still able to decipher the symbolism of the old representations. Even deciphering the hidden meanings becomes a fascinating intellectual adventure - especially when one discovers that among the figures present in the cloisters is also Saint Jacek Odrowąż from distant Poland.
The project also presents the results of scientific research into the technology of workshops producing azulejos in Seville and Lima during the colonial period, documents the state of conservation of the decorations and proposes directions for future conservation work. The virtual tour of the Santo Domingo Monastery is an invitation to explore art conservation as a multifaceted research process - combining material, historical and cultural analysis - and to discover a heritage that, thanks to new technologies, becomes accessible to a wide audience.
With us visiting Santo Domingo you can:
- Take part in an online virtual walk with numerous interactive elements, which was prepared on the basis of photographic and scientific documentation provided by the researchers and then digitally developed into a VR environment. As part of the virtual walk through the cloister, you can learn about the biographies of the saints whose images have been placed on the walls and discover other secrets of the cloisters of the monastery garden.
- Discover the fascinating biographies of the saints and others of merit to the Church depicted on the azulejos tiles. These biographies have been reproduced as part of our team's painstaking work and, together with a detailed bibliography, have been published for the first time in one place in three languages.
- Watch multimedia mini-lectures showing interesting aspects of conservation and how to restore azulejos tiles.
- Learn practical information about the Monastery of Santo Domingo and its history, as well as its present.
All the results of this project's work are available on this website in three languages.
Why is this important to us?
When creating virtual walks and other types of multimedia, it is very easy to lose the point of the work. It is not about pure entertainment or a walk through a distant place. We are bringing these far-flung places closer not only geographically, but also historically and scientifically. An example from Santo Domingo: many of the figures whose images we found in the ornaments of the monastery's rotisserie have never had biographies longer than 2-3 lines in Poland. Now, in a sense, we have brought them back to life.