U N E S C O W o r l d H e r i t a g e M o n u m e n t s
“Painted Byzantine Churches of Troodos Mountain” in Cyprus, are dating from the 11th to 14th century AD. These churches – monuments were inscribed to UNESCO list of World Heritage Monuments since 1985 (expect Church of Ayia Sotira (of the Transfiguration of the Savior) tou Soteros, which was included in 2001). UNESCO ‘s criteria were both the architecture and the landscape design but also the fact that these monuments are “exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition”.
The region of Mountain Troodos is characterized by one of the largest groups of churches and monasteries of the former Byzantine Empire. The complex of 10 monuments are all richly decorated with murals, provides an overview of Byzantine and post-Byzantine painting (frescoes religious painting) in Cyprus. They range from small churches, such as the Church of Virgin Mary in Asinou, whose rural architectural style is in stark contrast to their highly refined decoration, to monasteries as St John Lampadistis
The geometric documentation of a monument is defined as the action of acquiring, processing, presenting and recording the necessary data for the determination of the position and the actual existing form, shape and size of the monument in the three dimensional space at a particular given moment in time. Geometric documentation should be considered as an integral part of a greater action, the General Documentation of the Cultural Heritage. This comprises, among others, the historical documentation, the architectural documentation, the bibliographic documentation etc. All this wealth of information is usually stored, i.e. archived, in many forms. In the previous years analogue forms of archiving were employed, such as special monument cards.
For the purposes of a larger inter-state project between Greece and Cyprus under the name of APHRODITE, as much information as possible was collected for the ten churches. This wealth of data has been organized in a database, in such a way to enable access of this information also from within web applications, such as e.g. Google Earth. This Monument Information System, (MIS) has been developed, to provide a wealth of qualitative and quantitative information to the user. The system caters for the collection, archiving, processing, management of any kind of information and virtual touring using multimedia technology.The 3D models of the churches have been constructed using the Google Sketch-Up utility, with the help of some elementary measurements in situ.
