This volume deals with digital reconstructions and visualizations of palaces castles and
other kinds of residential architecture of the early modern period. It focuses not so much on
the digital modelling of extant buildings but rather on the virtual reconstruction of 'lost'
buildings -in particular of palaces destroyed or drastically altered or which were never
actually built in the first place. These diverse case studies presented here explore a range of
approaches and methods of using virtual reconstructions as tools for both scientific research
and dissemination to a wider public. They address problems such as the visualization of
uncertainties the dynamic modelling of a building's evolution through time and the use of
digital reconstructions as repositories of data and knowledge. The numerous digital models and
associated images discussed in this volume display an enormous variety in terms of the
underlying technology data conceptualization and visual style. Such adaptability means that
this new medium finds considerable application in architectural history and related
disciplines. It also means that digital reconstructions ought to be regarded as cultural
products and therefore become objects of scholarly research in their own right.
