In Athens, Photographs from A&A’s Visual Resources Collection Digitally Revive a Lost Neighborhood

Originally published on the Department of Art & Archaeology.

In the 1930s, the Excavation of the Athenian Agora commissioned M. Messinesi to photograph the Vrysaki neighborhood at the center of Athens before demolishing it to begin digging.  After that, the “lost neighborhood” existed only in Messinesi’s work, split between a set of lantern slides in the archives of the Agora excavation, and the Messinesi Photographs Collection, housed in the Department of Art & Archaeology’s Visual Resources (VR) collections.  In summer 2025, the intensive five-day workshop “Visualizing the Past: Mapping Athens’ Lost Neighborhood” brought together a group of nine graduate students from Princeton and Greece to digitally revive it.

Hosted by the Princeton Athens Center, the workshop focused on the theory and practice of digital mapping in the humanities, critically engaging with a variety of historical sources, utilizing tools and methods for spatial analysis, and creating visual representations of complex historical narratives. 

As part of an ongoing partnership between Princeton’s Center for Digital Humanities (CDH) and Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, the workshop drew on expertise from VR and Princeton University Library, as well as partners from the MSc Program in Digital Methods for the Humanities at the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) and Cyprus Institute. Leading the workshop were CDH’s executive director Natalia Ermolaev, VR’s Curator of Asian Collections and Digital Specialist Yichin Chen, and Digital Scholarship Specialist at Princeton University Library Bryan Winston.

“This workshop exemplifies what makes digital humanities summer institutes so valuable—they create a space where humanists and technologists can work side-by-side, bringing their different disciplinary perspectives to bear on complex historical questions,” said Ermolaev. “We’re not just practicing cross-disciplinary collaboration, we’re actively building intellectual bridges between institutions and scholars in the US and Greece. When you have an international group with archaeologists, architects, historians, computer scientists, and curators working together to tell the story of a complex cultural moment, you get richer conversations, more innovative approaches, and lasting international partnerships that extend well beyond the workshop itself.”

Workshop participants stemmed from a variety of disciplines including history, archeology, comparative literature, cultural heritage management, and computer science. “The workshops created a collaborative environment where participants could share methods, critique, and ideas,” said participant Florian Endres, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature. A&A graduate student Katy Knortz agreed “It was a real strength of the program that, rather than focusing on a single discipline, it encouraged cross-disciplinary engagement and truly collaborative discussions.”

Examining the Messinesi Photographs Collection in A&A’s Visual Resources

To open the workshop, VR’s Yichin Chen introduced participants to Messinesi’s collection of 75 photographic prints, part of VR’s larger Homer Thompson Collection.  

The series also includes an original map hand-drawn from 1930 which indicates the location and angle from which each photograph was taken. “It is uncommon for a photographer to document both the location and angle of each photograph. The map of Vrysaki is therefore an invaluable resource and a primary source for reconstructing the lost neighborhood,” said Chen. “By connecting the 75 points marked on the map, we are able to gain a rare glimpse into a forgotten community that once existed.”

In addition, Chen described her digitization of VR’s extensive collection of Greek glass lantern slides. This unique collection contains over 4000 high-quality slides depicting sites, monuments, and aspects of daily life across Greece between 1920 and 1940. In Chen’s presentation, she outlined both the methodologies employed and the challenges encountered in developing a digital project, with particular emphasis on the critical role of cataloging and data management.

“Data wrangling and management are essential yet frequently overlooked components of digital projects,” said Chen. “By revealing the process behind the scenes, we wanted to share practical methodologies and the importance of long-term data preservation with the participants.”

Director of VR Julia Gearhart is thrilled to see collections brought to life. “Our efforts to digitize these collections are not only to allow remote researchers access to these resources, but also to encourage their use in innovative, interdisciplinary, projects like this one,” she said.  Facilitating this kind of scholarship, Leigh Anne Lieberman, the Digital Project Specialist in A&A, also works closely with faculty and students in the department and beyond to develop data-driven, digital initiatives that highlight VR’s unique collections.

Inside the Digital Bootcamp

Throughout the course of the workshop in Athens, participants were taught the complete life cycle of a mapping project from idea to prototype, investigating best practices in digital mapping as well as digital project and data management generally. 

“We had hands-on sessions with each tool that could advance the project and shared alternative tools,” said Winston. “As we worked, we explored the features and limitations of each tool and how each decision during the project life cycle is contingent on the previous. Through this process, we communicated how to think critically about these tools and their outputs,” said Winston. “Humanists are well-trained in being critical of their sources, so the participants were very receptive to applying their discerning eye—a skill equally important as learning how to use the tool itself—to the tools we used.” Iteration was also important to the discussion on digital mapping. “By iterating over our data, and then different versions of our maps, we highlighted one of the major benefits of applying computational methods to your research,” said Winston. “We can identify unnoticed patterns and ask new questions of our research.”

“The clear and methodical approach made the material easy to digest and also provided a useful mental map for applying these methods in my own research,” said  Knortz. “One of the most valuable aspects of the workshop was discovering the sheer range of digital tools available to scholars. Being introduced to different options for collecting, cleaning, and manipulating data helped me understand how to prepare for each stage of a digital project.”

Using case studies of digital humanities projects focused on monuments and areas that are no longer accessible, the group explored tools like ESRI’s ArcGIS StoryMaps, LeafletJS, and others. Armed with this training, participants designed maps that spatialized the important resources created by Messinesi. 

Reviving a Lost Neighborhood, In Virtual Situ

Putting digital tools into practice, the group turned their focus on the Vrysaki neighborhood and Messinesi’s visual evidence of it. 

Facilitating this, a highlight of the workshop was the presentation and tour of the Athenian Agora by Sylvie Dumont, author of Vrysaki: A Neighborhood Lost in Search of the Athenian Agora. “Walking the site with her, amid fragments of stone and layers of urban memory, left a deep impact on me and sharpened my understanding of how loss, excavation, and narrative intersect in the Athenian landscape,” said Endres.

Participants grappled with the tension between the now visible Ancient Agora and the demolished neighborhood of Vrysaki. “The focus on mapping ‘lost’ urban spaces invited reflection on issues of historical memory, cultural preservation, and the ethical stakes of digital reconstruction,” said Endres. 

With a better sense of place, participants began constructing a dataset that could be mapped. They used OpenRefine to wrangle the descriptive data. “The biggest challenge was associating coordinates with photographs of buildings that no longer existed and had no corresponding street addresses,” explained Ermolaev. To proceed, participants learned about MapWarper, a geo-reference tool that allows you to render an image on a coordinate grid. After overlaying Messinesi’s hand drawn map over a modern map, participants were then able to associate coordinates with photograph markers. This made it possible to map the images and create a prototype reconstruction of Vrysaki. To complement the technical skills to make it possible to create a digital map, participants shared critical reflections about their data and the challenges of representing research spatially. Participants were also introduced to more advanced software and projects, such as 3D renderings of lost buildings and ways of fostering engagement with this cultural heritage. “In all, participants walked away with a usable dataset and a map prototype that fostered ideas for their own projects while also gaining a sense of what is possible for a larger scale project in the future,” said Winston.

“The program has significantly advanced my dissertation research, which focuses on theories of displacement, media, and memory—especially as exemplified by Sigmund Freud’s 1904 visit to Athens,” said Endres. “I was able to begin developing a spatial reconstruction of Freud’s journey through the city using georeferencing and map annotation via tools such as StoryMaps. This hands-on experience helped me prototype the integration of archival documents, correspondence, and visual reference points into a dynamic, research-driven digital map.” “I left the program not only with technical skills and scholarly momentum,” said Endres, “but also with a renewed sense of connection to the material I study.”

Visual Resources Research Award

To encourage use of VR’s rich collections, A&A has established the Visual Resources Research Award to support a short-term residency allowing scholars to work with materials in person.  VR’s collections include archival material from various archaeological expeditions undertaken by members of the department in Sardis (Turkey), Antioch-on-the-Orontes (Turkey), Morgantina (Sicily), Polis (Cyprus), and Syria. These also include faculty photograph collections such as the A. Sheldon Pennoyer Collection featuring Italian monuments in the aftermath of World War II, the records of Byzantinist Kurt Weitzmann, and documentation of the restoration of Hilandar Monastery in Mount Athos by Slobodan Nenadović, to name just a few.

Visual Resources is currently accepting applications for the 2026 Research Award. Applicants should submit their C.V. and a letter of interest to visres@princeton.edu by November 1, 2025.