VIRTUAL ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

This paper introduces a tripartite framework for analyzing sacred urbanism in Varanasi, arguing that its spatial logic can be read through the intersection of three co-constitutive spheres: ritual topography, colonial-modern governance, and cosmological mapping. Moving beyond linear or purely archaeological understandings of sacred cities, this study proposes a model of triple intersection where religious practice, cartographic abstraction, and political control converge on the physical fabric of the city. By tracing the alignment of ritual circuits (e.g., the Panchakroshi Yatra), with colonial survey maps and mythic geometries (e.g., the Mandala of Kashi), the paper shows how Varanasi is not merely layered, but structured through relational tensions between embodied pilgrimage, epistemic abstraction, and imperial rationality. These tensions materialize in the built environment—ghats, temples, tanks, and alleyways—where competing authorities inscribed differing spatial regimes. Using archival maps, Sanskrit pilgrimage texts, and contemporary urban planning documents, the paper re-maps Varanasi as a city of intersections rather than zones. It asks: what happens when we move from stratified models of urban history to ones that recognize simultaneous, interpenetrating spatialities? How might this re-reading inform broader understandings of sacred cities across South Asia? This triple-tier model offers a transferable analytic tool for examining contested heritage sites, where religious imaginaries, bureaucratic rationalities, and community memory are not sequential but coeval. It ultimately argues for a renewed vocabulary in understanding sacred urbanism—one that accommodates both cosmology and control, memory and mapping.