Launch of the Digital Periegesis

We are delighted to invite you to the official Athens launch of the Digital Periegesis (periegesis.org) on Wednesday, 3 December 2025, 10 to 11 am, at the Swedish Institute at Athens, Mitseon 9. This online resource, hosted and maintained by Uppsala University, provides a searchable database of all the places and objects in space described in Pausanias, as well as the people and events mentioned. In addition, the Digital Periegesis provides raw data; side-byside enriched texts of the Periegesis in both ancient Greek and English; maps of the places described and network graphs of their relations; and links to global authorities, such as Wikidata. In this way, the Digital Periegesis gives researchers access to authoritative data and the use of the latest tools for analyzing Pausanias’s narrative and empowers general enthusiasts to explore the places and accounts associated with them for themselves.

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Sometime in the second century CE, Pausanias of Magnesia (in modern-day Türkiye) wrote the Periegesis Hellados or Description of Greece. Documenting ‘the sights worth seeing’ (Pausanias 1.39.3) on a tour of the Greek mainland, this text offers a uniquely rich first-hand account of ancient Greece’s built environment, down to its temples, statues and paintings. Yet spatial description characterises only one aspect of this narrative: Pausanias also relates ‘accounts’ (1.39.3) that provide histories to many of the places through which he moves and the objects he describes.

The Digital Periegesis represents the first concerted effort to capture this information in a comprehensive and consistent manner, and publish the results for general use according to Linked Open Data FAIR principles. Running since 2017, with funding from the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation and the Swedish Research Council, the Digital Periegesis also articulates best practice for using the latest digital technology to map historical texts, and cultural heritage more generally, while as far as possible prioritising reuse of data, standards and tools. In raw data terms, the Digital Periegesis has annotated: 4225 places, 1762 objects/artworks, 3882 people/groups, 161 cited ancient texts, and (still in progress) over 1000 events and some 1500 logoi recorded by Pausanias. The team began its work using the open-source annotation tool, Recogito to capture entities and concepts from the Greek text along with basic relations. These annotations were transformed to fully linked data using the Nodegoat platform. publish them in structured formats, and visualise them using maps or network graphs; and the open-source software library, Peripleo, for visualising text and map alongside each other. To ensure optimal data discovery, interoperability and reuse, the Digital Perigesis team have liaised extensively with leading experts in the field of LOD under the aegis of the Pelagios Network, including MANTO and Pleiades, and have contributed widely to Wikidata itself. All of our data have unique and stable identifiers (URIs), linked to external authorities where possible, are free to download as csv or geoJSON files, and can be visualised in various in-built maps.

The Digital Periegesis team are: Anna Foka (Uppsala University), Elton Barker (Open University), Kyriaki Konstantinidou (Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Swedish Institute at Athens), Linda Talatas (Swedish Institute at Athens), and Brady Kiesling (ToposText, Swedish Institute at Athens) and Fotis Theodoridis (Södertörn). Other colleagues who have joined us along the way include: Cenk Demiroglou (Umeå University), Nasrin Mostofian, Vasiliki Tsoumari and Alexandros Kokkinides (Uppsala University).

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At the launch event, the Digital Periegesis team will present the interface, demonstrate its functions, and discuss its potential for research, education, and heritage engagement. There will be coffee and cake for registered participants. 

Please confirm your participation by email to info@periegesis.org 

We look forward to celebrating this milestone with you in Athens.

The Digital Periegesis Team
Anna Foka - Elton Barker - Kyriaki Konstantinidou - Linda Talatas - Brady Kiesling

Attached files: Flyer