Scholarly record

THE APPLICATION OF LASER SCANNING TECHNOLOGY IN DOCUMENTING HISTORICAL UNDERGROUND OBJECTS IN SANDOMIERZ (POLAND)

Rafał Gawałkiewicz

Abstract

The buildings preserved in the Old Town of Sandomierz belong to one of the oldest preserved, best recognizable and interesting from the architectural and archaeological point of view places in Poland. Historical buildings are situated on one of seven hills, like Seven Hills in Rome, the capital of Italy. Thus, the residents often call Sandomierz ?Little Rome?. Another significant element making these two European cities similar is the network of underground labyrinths being an extraordinary tourist attractions. In Rome there are catacombs, in Sandomierz ? old merchant?s cellars and dungeons formed in the loess hills. In 1970s (the time of the beginning of saving urban areas with mining methods) they were joint together and now they make a very interesting architectonic space: the Underground Tourist Trail (Podziemna Trasa Turystyczna ? PTT). Nowadays, in Poland there are 74 underground objects in use, classified in 5 theme categories, i.e.: caves (23), mines and shafts (18), old military objects (18), dungeons and cellars (6) and other underground objects (9). One of such objects, attractive in historical, geometric and architectural aspect is the Underground Tourist Trail in Sandomierz, making an integral part of the Old Town?s building complex. Unfortunately, over the last 40 years of exploring the underground labyrinth (since 10th December 1977), no project documentation was preserved, which was supposed to have been made at the stage of securing the building infrastructure on the surface and the adaptation of preserved cavities for the needs of the present trail. Neither architectural and construction projects made after the construction had been completed (as-built documentation) were preserved. Nowadays the access to modern measurement technologies and information tools allows not only making very basic documentation in the form of maps and sections, but first of all - spatial projects in the form of 3D models, which perfectly reflect a complicated geometry of this type of underground constructions. The article presents the results of contemporary 3D inventory of the Underground Tourist Trail in Sandomierz with the application of integrated surveying technologies, i.e.: laser scanning, electronic total stations and geometric levelling. Due to the complicated spatial structure (small chambers, narrow corridors with common change of the direction) inventory required untypical control network (very short sides) in the form of the two-sided sequence, which made the fundament for further works and the element combining the applied measurement technologies.

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