Towards Semantic Description of Symbology and Heraldry Using Ontologies

The technological innovations that have emerged in recent years with the Semantic Web have opened a door to a new world, a world which is still partly unexplored, but whose potential, if properly exploited, can be truly remarkable. The use of XML technology alone for cataloging and managing information - of whatever type they are - therefore represents a real obstacle to their real enhancement. This aspect represents the starting point towards the creation of a formal ontology that semantically models the data relating to cultural heritage. In this paper we investigate the structure of an ontology and what, at a first analysis, could be the usefulness of a relative semantic annotation. In particular, the desire is to formally formalise the domain of symbology and heraldry that is an important application domain in cultural heritage.