La città medievale, la città dei frati: luoghi e spazi di confronto e scambi The medieval city, the city of the friars: places and spaces for intercultural exchange

This session is part of the research project entitled The medieval city. The city of the friars financed by AISU Networking after participating in the 2018 Call for Proposals and the Medieval Heritage Platform project (DIST Department of Excellence, Turin Polytechnic), with the support of the ICEA Department of the University of Padua. The project was conceived to resume studies aimed at investigating the relationship between the convents of mendicant orders and the city in the Italian and European context. The international character of the two religious orders, Minors and Preachers, born in the first half of the 13th century, and the phenomenon inherent in the relationship between convent settlements and the development of the Minors and Preachers requires that the analysis go beyond Italy. For this reason, the scope of the research expands geographically to include other European and American contexts. Moreover, the widespread presence of the Mendicants in all European urban centres makes it possible to study even geographical regions that up until now have received little attention. A first meeting of the project took place in Turin, at Castle of Valentino (DIST, Turin Polytechnic) in July 2019. The seminar – entitled The Medieval City is the City of the Friars? – was an opportunity for a debate on the issues and ongoing research on mendicant settlements with the involvement of established scholars who debated with young researchers on mainly methodological issues (use of sources, dialogue between disciplines, research prospects, use of digital humanities, etc.) from a highly multidisciplinary perspective. The progression of scale from a territorial analysis to architecture was the common thread of the Turin seminar. This aspect was later taken up with a strong characterisation and attention to the urban context in the session The medieval city, the city of the friars: places and spaces for intercultural exchange held at the 9th AISU Conference in Bologna, which was the second step of the project.