Emblematic Monument Research Articles

PIXE, SEM and RAMAN analysis of pictorial materials from the VIII century crypt of San Salvatore, Brescia (Italy)

The complex of Santa Giulia of Brescia (Italy) is a great and extensively studied architectural and archaeological site, of which the church of San Salvatore is an emblematic monument. This study, conducted in the crypt of the church, implements what was published from non-destructive particle induced x-ray emission (PIXE) examination of the painting materials with structural and compositional analyses by Scanning Electron Microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. These analyses produced new and decisive data for a correct identification of the pictorial palette. We also added a photographic documentation in a few bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. The review of all data and their complementarity has allowed a more sound insight into the pictorial techniques used for the crypt’s decoration. This work integrates the archaeological studies conducted on the crypt and, together with them and in comparison with data from coeval monuments, confirms in the church of San Salvatore the use of products and techniques typical of the Longobard Period.

Transferring Historical Iconography into a Contemporary Visual Perspective. Case Study: Adamclisi Monument

It's known that any form of communication uses signs. Communication through signs, the imagistic dimension of artistic creation, has been the basis of all periods of cultural development of humanity. Understanding these periods in human history has been a constant concern for historians, art historians and archaeologists. For example, the translation (the decoding) of the hieroglyphs (i.e. visual narratives) allowed the understanding of the complexity of the Egyptian culture. Another example comes from the time of ancient Rome, where visual narratives contain complex infographic messages. The war periods followed by peace were an opportunity for cultural affirmation and development in which infographics played an important role. The power of the prominent figures of the Roman Empire was also due to the use of infographics on the emblematic monuments. This paper aims to bring a new perspective on the cultural history of humanity through the presence of infographics as a political tool for transmitting complex messages. The study presented in the paper is a decoding of the Adamclisi Monument, a Roman triumphal piece of architecture located in southern Romania, used to show a strong cultural and political message about war and peace. By transferring the symbols, shapes and human images from the metopes of this monument into contemporary visual form, one can lead to new ways of rendering historical and cultural events in a contemporary artistic interpretation.

SFM PHOTOGRAMMETRY AS A TOOL FOR THE CONSERVATION OF THE CULTURAL HERITAGE OF BOGOTÁ (COLOMBIA), WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE ADOPT A MONUMENT PROGRAM

Abstract. As stated by the UNESCO, cultural heritage is both a product and a process that provides societies with a wealth of resources that are inherited from the past, they are currently created present and transmitted to future generations for their benefit. According to its needs each country has regulated and taken actions aimed at preserving its heritage (UNESCO,2017). In the case of the city of Bogotá, different regulations have been enacted seeking to protect and preserve the cultural heritage. Recently, the Instituto Distrital de Patrimonio Cultural (IDPC) (District Institute of Cultural Heritage), with the Secretaria de Planeación Distrital and the Instituto de Desarrollo Urbano, began developing work of an inventory and valuation of the sculptures and monuments found in the public space of Bogotá. In this context, this project seeks to contribute, from the academy, in the virtualization of the cultural heritage of the city by using the Photogrammetry SfM. For this purpose, two emblematic monuments of the city have been selected in order to reconstruct them three-dimensionally and therefore contribute to their conservation as a heritage. The chosen monuments correspond to a replica of the sculpture of San Agustín No. 28 which represents the God of War of that culture and the Rebeca, first nude located in public place in Bogota. Several images were taken from each monument, using different device and software’s. The product obtained meets the initial expectation of three-dimensional reconstruction and establishes a workflow to be applied to other monuments in the city or anywhere.

Mineralogical Analysis of Mortars in the Walls of Ávila (Spain) and Its Surroundings

The present article evaluated the mineralogical composition of 85 mortar samples from some emblematic monuments of Ávila city (Spain), which were collected during the restoration of the monuments. The aim of this article is to try to extract the relationship between the composition and the origin of the raw materials, as well as to identify possible alterations in the samples. The study of the samples was carried out using visual and petrographic techniques such as stereoscopic microscope, XRD, and SEM/EDX analysis. The main components of the mortars were calcite, feldspar and quartz, although small amounts of phyllosilicates were also identified. The minerals of the mortars came from the surroundings of the city, and some of the samples presented evident alteration of the original materials due to humidity, salt concentration, and biological weathering, possibly inducted by unfortunate effects of the restoration. Finally, a study of the salts present in some mortars showed that most samples display contamination of soluble salts such as halite, thenardite, hexaedrite, and carnalite. This investigation offers fresh insight into historic building activity and related techniques, and should provide knowledge useful for restoration and conservation processes.

Seismic behavior and assessment of masonry heritage structures. Needs in engineering judgement and education

Built cultural heritage is at risk due to manmade and natural hazards. The seismic vulnerability of ancient masonry buildings is particularly difficult to assess and requires specialized technical skills. Key aspects are the materials properties and nonlinear effects, the morphology of the structural elements, the connections between structural elements, the stiffness of horizontal diaphragms and the building condition. This paper addresses the holistic approach recommended for the structural assessment of historic masonry buildings and the developments in the areas of inspection, diagnosis, monitoring and non-destructive testing, with applications to emblematic monuments. The methodology covers a step-by-step approach, based on historical research, an inductive study on similar structures, and a range of surveying, experimental, analytical and numerical tools, all aimed at evaluating the structural response and defining safety levels. Attention is given to the need of conservation engineering background of professionals and ways to attain this goal.

Study and Analysis of Existing Historical Burials: The Position of the Dead inside the Co-Cathedral of Sta, Maria in Cáceres (Spain)

Cáceres has been a World Heritage Site since 1986 and one of its most emblematic monuments is the Co-Cathedral Church of Santa María which is located within the walled city of Cáceres in the heart of its historic centre. The building was erected between the 15th and 16th centuries over an earlier Mudejar building. Although there are several studies about the church from a historical and architectural point of view, none of them have been dedicated to its pavement which contains one of the most important tombstone mosaics in Spain. It is a checkerboard of tombs executed progressively from XV century that occupies the totality of the three church naves from the start to the chevet. The present study initiates a precise dimensional analysis of tombstones paving the floor of the Co-cathedral Church of Santa María in Cáceres to catalogue them, establish the orientation of the dead buried under its granitic pavement and concretizing certain aspects of the architectural evolution of the temple. To carry out this study, advanced methods of photogrammetry and digitalization have been used in order to be precised and able to rebuild the lost and crucial information. When we mention the position, we do not refer only to the topographical one, interesting in itself by the relation that always existed between closeness to the altar and fortune, but also to the position of the person in the society that gave him burial. This social positon can be deduced by the artistic dimension of the shield carved on its tomb placed in one of the most complete heraldic groups of the Spanish Renaissance.

Espaces peints, pèlerinage et liturgie à la cathédrale Notre-Dame du Puy (XIe-XIIIe siècles)

The cathedral at Le Puy is an emblematic monument of the western Middle Ages. The aim of this paper is a reinterpretation of its wall-paintings as spatial markers of a topography surrounded by an ecclesiological and liturgical discourse, translated by images and inscriptions, and deeply linked to the cathedral’s various statuses, as a cathedral and as a pilgrimage place.

A first insight on the biodegradation of limestone: the case of the World Heritage Convent of Christ

The present study is a multidisciplinary approach applied to architectural stone materials of the Convent of Christ in Tomar (Portugal) in order to understand and mitigate the active decay processes. The structure and appearance of the stonework from the Convent of Christ are strongly affected by stains, biofilms and structural degradation. To investigate these phenomena, a multianalytical approach comprising X-ray microdiffraction, scanning electron microscopy, microRaman and microinfrared spectroscopy was applied to the examination of altered outdoor stone areas being detected calcium oxalates, carotenoids and microbial proliferation. The presence of these alteration products seems to be correlated with the microbial activity of bacteria, microalgae, cyanobacteria and filamentous fungi. This work showed that the application of complementary methodologies is an efficient strategy to characterise the stone decay, and constitute a starting point for successful conservation intervention plans that are urgent to ensure the preservation and safeguard of this emblematic monument.

Moscow-Paris-Baillet-Moscow

An archaeological evaluation undertaken in 2004 in Baillet-en-France, north of Paris, unearthed remains of the sculptured frieze which adorned the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 International Exhibition. This discovery led us to track the astonishing trajectory of this emblematic monument, example of socialist realism and symbol of the USSR. Upon the dismantlement of the 1937 exhibition, the Soviet monument’s propylaeum, composed by artist Josef Chaikov of sculpted reliefs and statues representing the peoples of the USSR, was given to the metallurgist CGT worker’s union, who brought it to its newly opened leisure park at Baillet-en-France. With the abrupt political changes that followed, the monument was smashed to pieces in 1941, rediscovered after the liberation in 1944, and then buried in the ice ditch where it laid forgotten until 2004. The study of these unexpected remains with their iconic and iconoclastic destinies enables us to better understand the different aspects of their creation (origins, techniques, iconography) – at the same time, a new career awaits these Stalinian relicts, as a museum exhibit but also as a model, monumentally reconstructed in Moscow in 2010.

Propuesta de reconstrucción virtual y material por anastilosis de los restos arqueológicos del patio del palacio renacentista del Embajador Vich en Valencia, España

<p>Ambassador Vich’s palace in Valencia (1526-1858) was one of the first examples of renaissance architecture in Spain. After its demolition, part of the courtyard’s marbles was conserved, gathered, after a century and a half of pilgrimage in a unifying intervention in the Museum of Fine Arts of San Pío V in 2006. The recovery of the spatial, composite and material essence of the monument remains incomplete, as the cornices and frames that decorated the surrounding lower gallery are missing; archaeological remains made with grey Italian limestone, Pietra Serena, which together with the white Carrara marble, created the typical two-colour of these, such “Brunelleschian” composite games. The virtual anastylosis allows a proposal to be launched for the material recovery of the emblematic monument, favouring as such the correct reading of the same.</p>

Excimer laser removal of beeswax from galician granite monuments

Abstract The paper presents the use of laser radiation for cleaning of beeswax treated granite stone. In the early sixties, prestigious restorers decided to apply molten beeswax on the granite surface of valuable monuments with the aim of preventing the erosive action of atmospheric agents. An interesting example of this treatment is the Renaissance Frieze in the Cloister of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (Northwest Spain). With time, salt accumulation beneath the beeswax layer has caused an intense surface disintegration of granite. Conventional cleaning methods can destroy sculptured details of these emblematic monuments. For this reason, excimer laser cleaning has been chosen as a promising non contact, selective and environmentally friendly cleaning technique to be studied. The cleaning tests have been carried out using an excimer laser (ArF, 193 nm), with fluences between 0.5 and 2 J cm −2 pulse −1 and a spot area of 0.025 cm 2 . Samples representing beeswax films over Roan granite have been irradiated and their degree of cleaning has been studied as a function of the number of pulses and the laser fluence. Cleaning efficiency has been evaluated by FT-Raman Spectroscopy, allowing to establish the beeswax ablation threshold and the ablation rate. Excimer laser cleaning allows a progressive and controlled removal of a few tenths of micrometers of beeswax per pulse without damaging the underlying granite stone.

La puerta califal del castillo de Gormaz

Este artículo aborda el análisis parcial de un monumento emblemático de la arquitectura militar andalusí, muy citado como ejemplo de la arquitectura califal pero que aún hoy adolece de un estudio en profundidad y con metodología adecuada para identificar sus distintas fases. Se presenta una planimetría fotogramétrica nueva de su puerta, se analiza su estructura y los cánones compositivos que marcaron su diseño y se aborda un tema hasta ahora nunca observado como es la existencia de vestigios de una fortaleza anterior construida seguramente con tapias de tierra y de la que sólo ha llegado hasta nosotros la impronta que dejó en las estructuras del siglo X.

Monitoring the health of an emblematic monument from terrestrial laser scanner

This paper deals with the application of terrestrial laser scanner technology to the health monitoring of a monument in the World Heritage List. Specifically, this monument is a mediaeval wall located in Avila, Spain. The main aim of the paper is to show the relevance and novelty offered by the laser scanning methodology developed, which incorporates different statistical and modelling approaches not considered until now. In addition, the methods proposed in this paper together with the obtained results allow the measurement of entire structures or deformed shapes in buildings. The accuracy of our methodology compared to surveying methods proved satisfactory. Thus, they have been useful not only to show its viability but also to secure and maintain the safety and serviceability of this emblematic monument.

Health monitoring of an emblematic monument by terrestrial laser scanning

Health monitoring of an emblematic monument by terrestrial laser scanning

Fana, templa, delubra destrui praecipimus: <i>el final de los templos de la Hispania romana.</i>

There are in the Theosodian Code a series of imperial laws regarding the suppression of pagan sacrifices or idol’s cult (CTh XVI, 10) during the IVth Century. At the same time the imperial laws mantain and recommend that is necessary to preserve the temple buildings as emblematic monuments and useful buildings of the cities. The present article analyses, using all the available sources (literary, archaeological, legislative) the problem of the end of the pagan temples in Hispania. The main clonclusions are that they were not transformed in churches until a very late period (VI-VIIth centuries) neither destroyed or dismantled. Some of the tempels were abandoned in the IVth century, others were reoccupied by houses or other type of constructions, and is only in the Vth century that archaeogical evidence attests a reuse of their materials for other purposes. The Spanish case is compared with other provinces of the Roman Empire in which we can see similar developments and characteristics.

Afterlives of the Tour Saint-Jacques: Plotting the Perceptual History of an Urban Fragment

Appended to a medieval Parisian church in the sixteenth century and stranded by revolutionary destruction, the Gothic Tour Saint-Jacques figures prominently in the city's nineteenth- and twentieth-century architectural imagination. This study of the modern afterlives of an emblematic monument, featured in the projects of Haussmann, Le Corbusier, and the surrealists, uses the lens of "perceptual history," or a plotting of the ways in which the site has been read and inhabited over time, to argue that successive representations of a city fabric have a transformative effect on the lived reality of that fabric. To anchor this rumination within a larger speculation on the how and why of heritage making, we focus as well on the tower's emergent patrimonial status, consolidated by the physical fixes of repeated restoration and the fixing of its image by graphic and photographic representation. The traumas of the tower's particular semantic journey offer compelling evidence of the availability of symbolic redefinition as a viable and even necessary option for historic architectures under pressure in our inherited city centers. Repeatedly spared by its own mutability, the Tour Saint-Jacques would now appear inviolate, embraced as a trace of an unrecoverable past, a contact zone between contemporary Parisians and their forebears.

Functional adaptation of the Monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla. La Rioja, Spain

In 1985 the Department of Tourism of the Autonomous Community of La Rioja took the initiative of reviving the San Millan monastery, considered to be the most emblematic monument of La Rioja, by reforming it to become a pilgrims' refuge. During the studies the idea of a more ambitious intervention was born and eventually what was proposed was the creation of a hostelry. At the same time, another part of the monastery was also meant to be used as a Permanent Lecture Room of the Spanish Language. The greatest difficulty of this approach lay in the necessity to carry out the programs coping with the limitations of the existing building and the problem of conservation of its configuration and its exterior volume. This resulted in the necessity to reduce certain Services to the minimum. The criterion followed was the one of consolidation and reconstruction, with the greatest possible similarity to the original look of this part of the monastery, by trying to copy the constructive Solutions and formal aspects of the rest of the monastery through their re-interpretation. All this was performed in accordance with the current availability of the craftsmen as well as resources which were scarce if we bear in mind the scope of the works.