Well here’s something special! (via this twitter post) The image below (online here) is fairly familiar. It shows the “serpent column” in Constantinople, as it was in the 16th century before the heads broke off. The column is still there, in the Hippodrome. It is, in fact, the ancient Greek monument commemorating the battle of Marathon, where the Greek cities defeated the Persians. On it are inscribed the names of all the cities that sent soldiers. But this is not what makes this site special.
The whole manuscript is there! It’s on folio 15r, which is the 33rd image in the manuscript. The manuscript itself is a 16th century collection of illustrations of Turks in costume, with a few other things like this. Such collections of pictures exist at other libraries too.
The interface is actually useful, at least on PC. You get thumbnails, you get IIIF, you get proper references. It’s really rather marvellous. Universität Kassel have excelled! The platform is something called “Orka”, and frankly this is very nice.
The breadcrumbs at the top make it easy to find the collection, select the Latin manuscripts, display a list of shelfmarks. Whoever designed this actually talked to people who use these sites.
There are some 474 Latin manuscripts dated before 1500, which is very respectable. And, blessedly, you can display 100 mss at a time, in various orders.
It’s tremendously useful. It’s now time to note that the Kassel manuscripts are online, and may be accessible and usable.