A Salvage Operation – 3D Scanning an Endangered Cultural Site

—This story about 3D scanning for heritage preservation does go back a while, but we thought it was worth shedding some light on it once again. Enjoy the reading!

The Augustus temple in Ankara is the most important and famous monument of the entire Roman world, because of the inscriptions engraved on the wall of its cella, which constitute the political testament of the first Roman Emperor, in the bilingual text (Latin and Greek) of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti.

One of the first steps of the project was to survey the monument to obtain data on its current state, data that will allow for comparative analysis through the years. This is how a team from one of Politecnico di Torino’s departments (the Land, Environment and Geo-Engineering Department (DITAG)), lead by the Head of the research project (from the University of Trieste), flew in the fall of 2006 to Ankara, the capital of Turkey, to scan the marble inscriptions of the temple of Augustus. Read the complete story.