Marco Montanari

Marco Montanari

Engineer · Cartographer of historical & fantastical worlds

Open to consulting · @sirmmo · mail

Marco Montanari
Bologna · Italia

I am Marco Montanari, a coder, developer, software architect, visionary. Simply put, I’m a strange engineer who loves Artificial Intelligence (when it was still calle Machine Learning), Philosophy, Sociology, Theology. And I love urbanistics and architecture (because both are expressions of the previous list).

§ I

Index of works

№ 01

Open History Map

Open History Map is a project started in 2016 in Bologna with the aim of the creation of an Open Street Map of the past. I am president and software architect and developer for the project, using many amazing techs. Beside the collection of data we are now working on our own MCP server enabling better control of historical LLM content.
stack pythonpostgismaplibreopenstreetmapmcp
↗ Site ↗ Repo
№ 02

Open Fantasy Maps

Open Fantasy MAps is a project started in 2020 in Bologna based on the work of Open History Map with the aim of the creation of an Open Street Map of fantasy worlds. It now exposes more than 40+ maps for around 10 playing settngs usable as backdrop for rpg plays via mapping technologies but also as a reference for aventure creation supporting LLMs via specific MCP servers.
stack pythonpostgismaplibremcprpg
↗ Site ↗ Repo
№ 03

Just Play Bologna

Just Play is a boardgame players association founded in the outskirts of Bologna. It is also a place where we are experimenting with software aided gaming, started during the COVID-19 pandemic
stack angularnetlify
↗ Site ↗ Repo
№ 04

E-Dway

E-Dway is a bike sharing platform written in python, docker, angular and flutter. I am the lead architect and main developer of the platform.
stack pythondockerangularflutterpostgresqlredisfastapidjango
↗ Site ↗ Repo
№ 05

City Open Source

I was responsible for the first migration from Wordpress (for Mappi-na) to the first iteration of CityOpenSource, and now I am working on the latest iteration
stack nodenext.jsposrgresqlvercel
↗ Site
№ 06

Freelance work/Consulting

Send me a mail at marco.montanari@gmail.com for inquiries. My specialities are Data Science, Angular, GIS and geographic data management, python and web architectures
stack pythonangulargisdata sciencearchitecture
§ II

Recent entries

Survey
06 Apr — 05 May 2026
Entries
12
Origins
SI OH OF

  1. dem-drawer

    browser tool SI TypeScript
    Browser-based DEM editor with live 3D preview and GeoTIFF export — paint a heightmap, see the terrain in real time, ship it as a georeferenced raster.
    ↗ Repo

  2. hugo-cdn

    template SI Hugo
    Hugo template that turns a content tree into a static CDN catalog: every collection and asset gets a JSON descriptor plus a .well-known/cdn.json entry-point. Deployable to Pages or Netlify, no extra service.
    ↗ Repo

  3. ohm-zotero-chrome

    browser extension OH JavaScript
    Chrome extension that attaches the current page or any link as a linked-URL attachment to an existing Zotero item. Companion to the OHM Zotero plugin.
    ↗ Repo

  4. ohm-zotero

    Zotero plugin OH JavaScript
    Zotero plugin that manages OHM data descriptors (ohm:* tags) so the historical-data index can be curated from a researcher’s own bibliography.
    ↗ Repo

  5. geocontext-qgis

    QGIS plugin OH Python
    QGIS plugin that exports the current map view as gcx.json plus datasets/*.geojson, saved locally or pushed to a GitHub repo via the system git.
    ↗ Repo

  6. ofm-items

    Foundry VTT module OF JavaScript
    Foundry VTT module: click an object — token or live ghost — and a Gaia-backed dialog answers given this object and where we are, what can I do with it? as a clickable list of affordances.
    ↗ Repo

  7. ofm-unreal

    Unreal plugin OF C++
    Unreal Engine plugin: point it at a fantasy map name and a zoom level, every visible Mapbox-style layer becomes an actor hierarchy and every feature becomes a primitive or your own Blueprint class. No Mapbox SDK dependency.
    ↗ Repo

  8. geomqtt

    service OF Rust
    Redis wrapper with MQTT output for real-time geospatial state — the pipe behind live ghosts and shared worlds in Open Fantasy Maps.
    ↗ Repo

  9. vineland-runner

    CLI SI Python
    Python CLI for evaluating LLM agents against a psychometric instrument adapted from the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS-3). Targeting NeurIPS 2026 Education Track pilot — 8 models × 24 items × 5 replications.
    ↗ Repo

  10. georender

    service OF Python
    Symbolic map rendering service: applies a named JSON ruleset to geospatial data and renders PNGs as slippy tiles, full bbox images, or ad-hoc POSTed GeoJSON. Apache-2.0, shipped as a container.
    ↗ Repo

  11. openapi-gateway

    library SI Python
    FastAPI-based API gateway with automatic discovery of services via Docker labels — drop the labels on a container and it picks up the OpenAPI spec and routes through.
    ↗ Repo

  12. deploykit

    CLI SI Python
    CLI to deploy multi-service projects to cloud platforms from a single deployment.json config. dk init, set a token, dk deploy.
    ↗ Repo
§ III

Practice

Data ScienceData VisualizationGISPythonReactAngularSoftware ArchitectureWeb ArchitectureCloud Architecture
§ IV

Topology

A logic map of how the practice fits together — tools coloured by region, architectural features named like cartography (peak, ridge, range, archipelago), hairlines for the connections I work across daily.

Topology of practicePythonTypeScriptJavaScriptJavaC#PHPCC++PostGISOpenStreetMapOpenLayersMapLibreLeafletvector tilesDjangoFastAPIPostgreSQLRedisStripeLanguages valleyGIS mountainAI plateauMicroservice archipelagoFull-stack architecture ridgeReactNext.jsAngularSoftware architecture rangeCloud architecture peakMCPOllamagenerative AIn8nMQTTWebRTCDockerDocker SwarmTraefikPortainerMatomoGrafana
  • Geospatial
  • Languages
  • Backend & data
  • Frontend
  • AI / LLM
  • Real-time
  • Platform
  • Allied
  • Architecture
§ V

Marginalia

Non-profit

  • Wikimedia Italy treasurer
  • OpenStreetMap volunteer
  • Just Play Bologna president
  • Open History Map president
  • Mensa Italy treasurer
  • onData volunteer
  • Monithon volunteer

Hobbies

  • Piano, music and sound
  • Cinema, literature
  • Architecture, urbanistics
  • Archaeology, history
  • Boardgames, videogames

Social

facebook twitter deviantart medium slideshare linkedin github gitlab bitbucket docker soundcloud youtube twitch flickr steam boardgamegeek wikipedia openstreetmap orcid

Recognition

  • 2021 Shuttleworth Flash Grant
§ VI

Formerly

Mappi-na Monithon ASOC Invento
§ VII

Dispatches

Loading recent writing…

§ VIII

Support

If the open work here is useful to you, you can back it directly. GitHub Sponsors goes to all open-source efforts; Patreon supports Open Fantasy Maps specifically.