Depicting places of worship: The sacred landscapes of Tibet

Sacred landscapes is a research topic that has been explored mainly among humanities scholars. With the improvement of digital technologies and geographic information systems new perspectives on the subject can be established focused on geographic and conceptual space. In this presentation we will explore an assortment of technologies to display visual cultural data about the Buddhist monasteries sites of Tibet spread across the Himalia’s mountains. In Qgis and through terrain analyses (hypsometry, slope, aspect and hydrography) we will analyze the characteristics and symbols of auspicious sites of a set of monasteries. Using the plugin Space Syntax Toolkit and through the technique of axial analyses (Hillier and Hanson, 1984) we will also analyze the accessibility within each monastery.