Digital urban history as an interpretation key of cities' Cultural Heritage

The paper focuses on digital environments conceived by historical research on urban history dealt with a multidisciplinary approach. It presents the first outcomes of a research in progress by the authors (the one urban historian and the other geomatics) on the digitalization and interpretation of the affair of “via Roma” in Turin. This central street was demolished and rebuilt in the Thirties of 20th to be enlarged and designed with new fronts in order to introduce the image of the modern city, and by this way new investors in the city Centre. The research aims to a digital organization of data and their reading by 3D modelling and GIS tools stressing the richness and the variety of the cultural assets (material and immaterial) coming out from the urban space. The paper discusses as these tools could help in the understanding the relationships of the cultural assets within urban history and in re-thinking cities as part of the Cultural Heritage.