Toponymy in Nineteenth-Century Trento: A FAIR Dataset of Historical Evolution of Urban Toponyms in the Piazza del Duomo Area

This dataset collects the historical names of streets and squares in the piazza del Duomo area in Trento (Italy) during the 19th century. The dataset allows for the analysis of how toponymy has evolved in response to political and urban changes - from the Napoleonic era and the Habsburg administration to the contemporary period. In particular, the data show the transition from 'contrade' to 'vie', and It has been extracted from a selection of historical maps held by the Biblioteca Digitale Trentina (BDTn) and the Archivio Storico del Comune di Trento (ASCTn). Source Credit:The historical data presented in this collection is derived from the extensive archival and historical research published in A. Maragno, C. Volpi, Dove Trento si ingegna. Il ruolo degli ingegneri dello sviluppo della città di Trento durante il XIX secolo, Efesto, Roma 2023. - ISBN: 978-88-3381-537-4.Data Formats: 1) trento_toponymy.csv: A detailed CSV file containing the cartography name, author, year, and archival reference. For each historical map, the toponyms of seven main streets and squares in the area of the Duomo di Trento are listed. 2) trento_toponymy.ttl: A Linked Open Data (LOD) representation in Turtle format, aligned with Schema.org, FOAF, and GeoSPARQL vocabularies. 3) datapackage.json: A machine-readable metadata file that follows the Frictionless Data standard. It provides a precise technical description of the CSV structure, defining data types (e.g., numbers, URIs, years), the delimiter used (;), and the schema for all 7 toponymy columns. 4) trento_toponymy.json: This file follows the Schema.org standard. Its purpose is to describe the dataset as a whole for search engines (such as Google Dataset Search) and platforms like Zenodo. It contains 'high-level' information: the author, the license, the temporal coverage (1813–2026), and the geographic area. 5) README.md: serving as the primary entry point, this file provides the intellectual and methodological context. It defines the provenance of the data and describes the licensing (CC BY 4.0).