What was La Laguna like in the 16th century? Maybe you have ever asked yourself this question. Above all, considering the large number of buildings from this era that are preserved in this historic city. Well, For the first time, it is possible to take a walk through San Cristóbal de La Laguna as if you were in the year 1589 thanks to researchers from the University of La Laguna they have recreated it in 3D. The generated model is the result of a collaboration between computer scientists, digital artists and historians from the academic center, with funding from the Cajacanarias Foundation and the collaboration of the Laguna Town Hall.
The digital reconstruction is the first to be created of the period and is based on the oldest plan of the city by the Italian engineer Leonardo Torriani, who lived in La Laguna for different months between 1588 and 1589. The plan details an urban layout that It remains from that time and is one of the justifications for the inscription of the city as a World Heritage Site. A layout that “has remained intact over the centuries, showing a relationship between colonial urban plots, characteristic of the city-territory concept, and Mudejar architecture,” the researchers explain.
Accompanying the plan of La Laguna in the 16th century, Torriani highlights various characteristics of the city at that time, and emphasizes that it is the largest and most inhabited of the islands. He describes it by pointing out that the more than a thousand houses that make it up each have a large garden space, full of orange trees and other beautiful trees. From its surroundings, it stands out that, being at the top, “it has a lot of fog, with rains and very bad weather.”
This makes the houses look low and gloomy from up close; but that, from afar, looking from the height of some neighboring mountain, “the whole city has a good appearance, because the streets are straight, the houses full of trees, and the lake pleasant”. In relation to its inhabitants, he points out: “Here reside the justice and the council, the rich noblemen and merchants from Spain, France, Flanders, England and Portugal; between these and the islanders, there are very rich people”.
The plan of La Laguna in the 16th century and the description of the city have been the starting point for a project that has had to overcome various difficulties. Practically no buildings survive without alterations from Torriani’s time, so it has been necessary to study the plotting and the construction techniques of the time, the different types of houses, as well as their situation in the city according to the distribution of the estates. in the city and the importance of each street in the urban layout.
On the other hand, the unique buildings of the city only appear in plan on the map and there are no reliable descriptions of their appearance at that time, so they have had to be recreated using indirect documentary sources.
The resulting 3D model has great complexity. The environment of the city, which occupies more than twenty square kilometers, has been digitally reconstructed. The urban fabric of the time has been completely digitized, which survives in the city of the present, on which the more than a thousand houses that Torriani describes have been computer generated.
Churches, hermitages and houses of La Laguna in the 16th century… everything has been recreated in detail
Finally, all the unique buildings in the city have been recreated in 3D, including churches, convents, hermitages, public civil buildings or private houses such as the Adelantado. In addition, the latest technologies in character creation have been used to generate the inhabitants of the city by digitally reproducing the clothing of the time. Digital clothing has been generated for the various social classes: nobility, clergy, merchants, artisans and peasants for both men and women and for various ages.
As a result, several applications and audiovisual material have been generated that can be consulted in the Web page. Thus, it can be found from search engines to locate current addresses on the Torriani map, a museum of period clothing, videos with virtual tours of the city or 360 content for virtual reality glasses.
This type of 3D reconstruction and virtual reality applications is a tool that allows us to bring the history and heritage of our islands closer to its inhabitants and spread it worldwide.
