The Palmieri hypogeum in Lecce. From the integrated survey to the dissemination of contents

This paper describes a complete path of research, which, starting from analysis and restitution 3D, gets to the virtual exploration of Hypogeum Palmieri in Lecce, a monument of Messapian age (4th century BC) currently not visible by tourists, as it is located in the garden of a private home. This project is developed under the DICET, an Italian National Operative Program, that aims to define and produce innovative models, processes, and tools for the sustainable development of a smart territory by capitalizing on its cultural and environmental resources, and marketing their touristic offerings. The instrumental survey of the Palmieri hypogeum was executed using two different methods, laser scanner and digital photogrammetry, in order to get a high metric control of the monument and high-resolution textures for the sculpted friezes. The two different survey methods allowed a perfect porting on different outputs: the 3D real time visit on the web and virtual visit on portable devices. A stereoscopic animation, installed at the museum MUST (Historic Museum of Lecce) Lecce, provides an easy diffusion of the cultural message. The richness of the textures and the resolution of the models has allowed the study of the monument from a morphological and structural point of view. The virtual reconstruction contributes to read an unpublished part of monumental tombs in Messapian age. Thanks to a cinematic approach with a great scientific rigor, the historical competence of an ordinary visitor is now largely formed on information coming from these media, thus creating a great increase in the demand for products with a high technological content and popularising historical re-evocations and reconstructions of the past.