Il rilievo dell’altare maggiore della chiesa di S. Maria delle Armi sul Sellaro presso Cerchiara di Calabria

The survey of the main altar of the St. Maria delle Armi church was an opportunity to experiment with the integrated use of optical 3D measurement techniques, aimed at the graphic rendering of an architectural/artistic asset. This experimentation is part of the initiatives conducted by the Architectural Survey Laboratory of the Department of Civil Engineering (University of Calabria). St. Maria delle Armi on Mount Sellaro (Cerchiara di Calabria, CS) is one of the most important Marian sanctuaries in the region, a pilgrimage destination and – in the past – a shelter for orphans and destitute. The church, the Duke’s Palace, the Sanseverino Loggia and the other buildings of the complex were developed by successive additions and stratifications, around a cenobitic cave. Among the works there is the church reconfiguration with the addition of the eighteenth-century main altar. The main altar and the nave were acquired by integrating the laser scanner ToF and digital photogrammetry, with the aim of documenting and graphically renderings in detail both the shapes and measurements of the altar and the plano-altimetric configuration of the nave. The point cloud of the nave and the high resolution photorealistic texture mesh of the altar prove, once again, to be fundamental documents for representing/analyzing the work.