Biscari Network. Tutti gli uomini del principe (2312.11505v2)

Abstract: Thanks to its heterogeneity, the Biscari Archive, one of the most representative family's archives in Sicily, in a new digital historical study, became a valuable set of computable data that can lead historians to reconstruct the history of the city of Catania and Sicily. Ignazio Paterno' Castello and his wife Anna, princes of Biscari, were the promoters of the city's reconstruction after the 1693 earthquake, both politically and culturally. How could the digital historical methodology fulfil the traditional Historiography gap about how this noble family built its mighty? As we know, Humanities cannot easily be encapsulated in a few understandable numbers and names. However, historians, boosting Artificial Intelligence, such as Transkribus, and applying Historical Networks Analysis could help computers infer computable meaning from the digitised historical primary source. The Turing Machine became the most powerful tool to help historians understand what happened in the Past and identify the actors in cities and places' cultural and political renewal.