Map 1 **

Art and Architecture of the Medieval Mediterranean World

Digital Mediterranean Project


This assignment will teach you to use ArcGIS StoryMaps, a web-based story-authoring application. It will engage you in a digital investigation of the art and architecture of the medieval Mediterranean world to create and share your digital map of the region’s monuments and objects with narrative analytical text, images, sources, videos, audio, and other multimedia content.

You will integrate geographic visualization of the medieval Mediterranean with the region’s historical analysis of artistic production and cultural interaction. This assignment will enhance your knowledge of the medieval Mediterranean’s interconnected histories with spatial reasoning (location, direction, movement, size, and shape in a 3-dimensional reality). Your goal is to interpret the knowledge you have gained during this course to create a visually appealing and interactive digital showcase of scholarly narrative that contextualizes political, cultural, religious, and economic exchange and artistic production in the medieval Mediterranean world.

You must choose five (5) locations out of thirteen (13) to set up your GIS map. You will place a monument or object at each location. Write your analytical text (metadata information) based on your research. Use at least two (2) peer-reviewed academic sources and two (2) citations for each location’s monument or object. You may also use your in-class lecture notes (since those are your own intellectual notes that can form part of your analytical text).

Locations include:

  • Constantinople
  • Cordoba
  • Outskirts of Cordoba (where Madinat al-Zahra is located)
  • Damascus
  • Eastern Jordan (where Qusayr Amra is located)
  • Jerusalem
  • Fustat (Old Cairo)
  • Palermo
  • Pisa
  • Mecca
  • Saint Catherine (Mount Sinai; Sinai Peninsula)
  • Venice
  • Toledo


You will have three (3) steps and deadlines for completing this assignment. Please check your syllabus in Canvas for details and more information.

  1. Your written Digital Mediterranean project proposal is due on Friday, February 14, 2025, no later than 4pm.

  2. Your Digital Mediterranean project paper in a Word document to be uploaded on Canvas is due on Tuesday, March 18, 2025, no later than 4pm.

  3. Your completed Digital Mediterranean project on ArcGIS StoryMap is due on Wednesday, March 19, 2025, no later than 4pm.

** Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Arab. c. 90: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/748a9d50-5a3a-440e-ab9d-567dd68b6abb/