Salendo sulla Vedetta. Un rilievo laser scanner all’interno del castello di Gallipoli

Abstract

Going up on the lookout. A laser scanner survey inside the Gallipoli castleGallipoli is a city located along the Ionian coast of Salento (Apulia, Italy) and it still preserves its original defensive system. Nowadays, the phases dating from the sixteenth century are visible together with the later ones and, in recent years, particular attention was dedicated to the Castle. It was opened for visitors from 2014, except to the so-called tower “Della Vedetta”, located on the northwestern quadrilateral’s corner. The only accessible areas of the castle’s lower level are two rooms with a connecting corridor, but the lower portion of the examined tower offers a rare proof of graffiti that has few local parallels. After a deep bibliographic and archivist research and the comparison with analogue works on similar well-studied contexts, we have carried out a direct analysis of this unknown portion through a 3D laser scanner. The scanner result proved to be an excellent tool to investigate the tower, whose articulation is made up of different rooms located on different levels connected by flights of stairs and where numerous mouths of fire are set. This 3D model allows to delineate the internal articulation, the constructive technique, the structural interventions and the whole corpus of graffiti too. The 3D survey helped to extrapolate considerable and various data. Moreover, it has suggested that a realization of a complete 3D model of the Castle can be a fruitful resource for its knowledge and it could represent a precious tool for an interactive enjoyment of the sectors still not open to visitors.