Main Focus
- Art and artistic cultures in the medieval Mediterranean
- Mosaics and material culture in Norman South Italy
- Scientific analyses and archaeometry on monuments and artifacts
Research Project
Mapping Sacred Spaces - The Digital Archive Project
The Digital Archive Project represents a fundamental step of the project Mapping Sacred Spaces. Forms, Functions, and Aesthetics in Medieval Southern Italy, directed by Tanja Michalsky, Elisabetta Scirocco, Ruggero Longo (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History) and Manuela Gianandrea (Università di Roma "La Sapienza"). This project aims to fully analyze the sacred space in the Middle Ages in Southern Italy between the tenth and fourteenth centuries.
Publications (Selection)
- "The first Norman cathedral in Palermo: Robert Guiscard's church of the Most Holy Mother of God", in Convivium, 5, 1 (2018), pp. 16–35.
- "Idealizing the medieval Mediterranean? Creation, recreation, and representation of Siculo-Norman architecture", in Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Volume 62 (2017), pp. [135]–170.
- Opus sectile a Palermo nel secolo XII: sinergie e mutuazioni nei cantieri di Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio e della Cappella Palatina. (atti di convegno Palermo 2011), a cura di Renata Lavagnini e Cristina Rognoni, Quaderni, 18 (2014), pp. 299–341.
- L'"opus sectile" nei cantieri normanni: una squadra di marmorari tra Salerno e Palermo. 2010 (atti del convegno Parma 2009), a cura di Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, Milano 2010, pp. 179–189.
- (together with Scirocco Elisabetta) "A scenario for the Salerno ivories: the liturgical furnishings of the Salerno Cathedral. 2016", in The Salerno Ivories, ed. Francesca Dell'Acqua, Anthony Cutler, Herbert L. Kessler et al., Berlin 2016, pp. 191–209.
Curriculum Vitae
Ruggero Longo (Palermo 1976) lives in Rome and is currently co-responsible of the Mapping Sacred Spaces Project
at Biblioteca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History. MA in
Science of Cultural Heritage at Tuscia University (Viterbo), Philosophy
Doctor in Art History, he specialized in archaeometric and diagnostic
systems for cultural heritage. His research activities concern the art
and architecture in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, the opus sectile and
mosaic decorations, the cultural interchanges in medieval Mediterranean.
In 2012 he was awarded the Aga-Khan post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University with a research concerning Marble decorations of Mamluk Cairo. Besides materials and matters, his interest is focused on the workshop dynamics in the Middle-Ages, a topic which he has dealt with during his research at the Bard Graduate Center in New York in 2015.
Since 2008 to 2015 he worked on the UNESCO nomination of Arab-Norman Palermo and the cathedrals of Cefalù and Monreale, inscribed in the World Heritage List in 2015. Currently, he is scientific responsible and coordinator for the UNESCO nomination of Early Medieval Benedictine settlements and their monastic landscapes in Italy.
From 2014 to 2015 he coordinated a project based on archaeological and bibliographical researches, three-dimensional survey and databases on the Royal Palace in Palermo, the outcomes of which have been presented through the International Conference: The Palace Unveiled – The Royal Palace in Palermo and other centres of power in the medieval Mediterranean, held in Palermo in June 2018. He is also collaborating with Dr. Elise Morero (Oxford University) on the research project Petrifying Power: The Uses of Hard-stone Spolia in Norman Sicily (11th–13th centuries), based at the Khalili Research Centre and sponsorized by Gerda Henkel Stiftung and John Fell Fund, Oxford.