Abstract

Listed buildings, even if they are not top landmarks, are increasingly attracting visitors. People express interest in hidden gems in their neighborhood or along their travel itinerary, and in the history of the building they live in. All required data has been meticulously collected by the offices for historical monuments but is not flexibly accessible. In Bremen, the database of buildings (with location, map of the estate, construction history, architect, photos) is searchable and browsable online3, but that only helps users who know how to use a rigidly structured database search form. Our beginning BauDenkMalNetz effort (“listed building web”) aims at a wider purpose: modeling the semantic structure of these data, starting in Bremen but open for other data, and exposing them via a semantic web interface with enhanced querying and presentation capabilities. Requirements beyond interactive browsing comprise auto-generation of customized printed guides (e. g. “Bauhaus villas in my neighborhood”), on-demand presentation on mobile devices (e. g. “medieval churches along my travel itinerary”), and serving linked data for usage by other services