Abstract
Often times the full documentation of a historical site requires excessive surveying and photogrammetric work,
while numerous objects of both large and very small volume should be recorded. Moreover, the complexity of
the objects, their usually large number and their spatial, topological or historical interrelation, calls for
application of advanced GIS techniques for their documentation.
To a growing extent, users ask for and photogrammetrists must produce virtual 3D representations of objects of
architectural and archaeological interest. Until recently such results could only be generated at high cost and
with highly specialized photogrammetric equipment; consequently, routine work in this field did not seem
practicable. Today, digital techniques not only pave the way for new products but also allow photogrammetric
practice, when applied to the documentation of architectural and archaeological objects in particular, to employ
modest means to ends of high quality.
These questions of documentation and development of virtual representations are addressed in the present
contribution, which has been motivated by the impressive number of tasks falling into this category and, more
specifically, by the documentation of the 14
th -century Monastery of St. Dionysios, Mt. Athos and the early
post-byzantine frescoes of its church. Finally, the approaches are illustrated with examples of a 3D virtual
representation of the church, an animated walk-through and a much needed automatic indexing of the
numerous frescoes using GIS and multimedia means.
Location - History of the monument
The monastery of St. Dionysios, is located in the northwestern side of the peninsula of Mt. Athos. It can be
only approached by the sea, from where the visitor has to follow an uphill 500m-long stone-road. The
monastery is built on a steep cliff 80 m above the sea. The climate in this area is rather mild and is
characterized by abrupt changes from sunny days to wild winds and heavy rain.
Figure 1. Location of Mt. Athos
| 
Figure 2. The monastery of St. Dionisios from the sea
|
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Figure 3. Close-up of the monastery |
The monastery was established in the second half of the 14
th century by Saint Dionisios, who was a monk at
that time at the monastry of Philopheou, Mt. Athos. In 1375, the byzantine Emperor Alexios the 3
rd of the
Komninos family (Fig. 5) issued the official decree for the establishment of the monastery, which is sealed by
the emperial golden stamp. This official document among other emperial documents (Fig. 4) of the 14
th century
are kept in the monastery.
Figure 4. Emperial Documents from the Monastery archives (1366, 1570, 1430 AC) |
Figure 5. Emperor Alexios the 3rd and his
wife Theodora (micrography, 1375) |
The buildings of the
monastery were built in
different time periods, and
due to the high seismicity
of the area many of them
have been repeatedly
renovated.
As it is typical in the
monasteries of Mt. Athos,
the main church (Katho-likon)
is located at the
center of the whole
building complex. The
main church was built
during 1535-1547 and has
5 cuppolas which are
covered by copper sheets.
The dimensions of the
church is 28mx 18m x 20m and its interior is fully covered by magnificent frescos made by the famous Cretian painter Zorzi (1
st half of the
16
th century). Worth mentioning is also the wooden temple of the church which was covered by gold in 1803,
while parts of the earlier temple from 1553 are still recognized in some places.
