DOCUMENTATION OF A COMPLEX CULTURAL HERITAGE ASSET WITH INTEGRATED GEOMATIC SURVEY: THE MONTANARO BELL TOWER

The research activities presented in this manuscript are focused on the documentation of a valuable built heritage asset: the Santa Marta bell tower (1769-1772), designed by the Italian architect Bernardo Antonio Vittone and located in the municipality of Montanaro (30 km North-East of Turin, Italy). The documentation of this complex palimpsest was designed to meet the requirements of the decay analysis and to provide a reference for the future restoration and valorisation project. To achieve these objectives a multi-scale and multi-sensor survey was designed and carried out exploiting several geomatics techniques (both range and image-based). The fieldwork activities were firstly dedicated to the creation and measurement of a reference topographic network to be used as a common local reference system for all the acquisitions as well as a series of control points (both inside and outside the bell tower) to be used for data orientation and accuracy assessment. Secondly, the exterior of the bell tower and its surroundings were imaged by means of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and a set of Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) acquisitions. The interior of the bell tower was acquired with two different rapid mapping approaches: using a handheld laser scanner based on the Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping (SLAM) technology and two different 360° cameras. All the acquired data were processed following both consolidated and experimental approaches and then integrated to generate traditional 2D architectural drawings supported by added value metric products. Of particular interest are the tests connected with the processing of the SLAM data and 360° images using a spherical photogrammetric approach that delivered preliminary encouraging results.