Mapping the Musical Renaissance

Mapping the Musical Renaissance is a digital humanities project that traces the movements and interactions of musicians in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, bringing together heterogeneous evidence (primary and secondary sources) into a map-based interface so users can explore connections across people, places, and time. Each record is modeled as an Event (a person or group at a location within a date range) and can be cited through a stable event URL.

Project Website

• Production site: https://renaissancemapping.org
• Site code (this repo): https://github.com/benory/Renaissance-mapping-website
• Document transcriptions/translations: https://github.com/benory/Renaissance-mapping-data

Repository Overview

This repository is a Jekyll/GitHub Pages site. Content, metadata, and UI logic are separated into clear layers:

• Pages and routing

  • index.markdown: map interface homepage
  • about/about.markdown: About page
  • documenation/documentation.markdown: documentation page (directory name is intentionally documenation/ in this repo)
  • 404.html: custom not-found page

• Layouts and shared includes

  • _layouts/default.html: base page shell
  • _layouts/map.html: map-specific wrapper
  • _includes/head.html, _includes/header.html, _includes/footer.html: reusable site fragments

• Metadata

  • _includes/metadata/*.json: exported relational datasets (Events, Locations, Biographies, Institutions, Bibliography, etc.)
  • assets/metadata/metadata_latest.zip: downloadable packaged dataset
  • _includes/metadata/Makefile: metadata download + ZIP packaging pipeline

• Map/UI scripts

  • scripts-local.html: root script aggregator for the map page
  • scripts-listeners.html: startup hooks and UI event listeners
  • scripts/app/state.html: global state, metadata loading, shared constants
  • scripts/app/lookup.html: lookup-table/index utilities
  • scripts/map/map-init.html: Leaflet initialization, marker creation, popups
  • scripts/map/clusters.html: cluster color logic
  • scripts/filters/filtering.html: master filtering/search pass
  • scripts/filters/visibility.html: visibility helpers (checkboxes/certainty/institutions)
  • scripts/ui/sidebar.html: dynamic sidebar rendering/grouping
  • scripts/ui/dropdown.html: autocomplete + selected-person highlighting
  • scripts/ui/histogram.html: timeline histogram generation
  • scripts/ui/slider.html: date-range slider behavior
  • scripts/ui/institutions.html: institution popup/filter UI

• Page-specific script/style wrappers

  • Root: scripts-local.html, scripts-listeners.html, styles-local.html
  • About: about/scripts-local.html, about/scripts-listeners.html, about/styles-local.html
  • Documentation: documenation/scripts-local.html, documenation/scripts-listeners.html, documenation/styles-local.html

• Styling and assets

  • assets/main.scss: global theme styles
  • styles-local.html: map-page inline styles
  • images/: icons, graphics, and team headshots

Local Development

Prerequisites

• Ruby + Bundler
• Jekyll (installed through bundle install)

Run locally

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve