The Documentation of the Medieval Entrance of the Rhodes Fortification Complex

The documentation and reconstruction of cultural heritage monuments represents a permanent record of the real world object in its original position and has been greatly facilitated with the technological advancements in data collection and processing using digital photogrammetry and terrestrial laser scanning. This paper presents an example of a monumental complex requiring detailed documentation. The purpose is to examine the complete workflow of documenting the Sea Gate of the Rhodes medieval fortification complex. It presents interesting aspects such as complex spatiality, different building materials and architectural decay. A multisensor approach was considered as the most suitable for such a complex structure and therefore, surveying, photogrammetric and terrestrial laser scanning techniques were employed. The process to obtain the orthophotomosaic from merging the different data types is explained. Also, the photorealistic texturing of the object is investigated and the resulted orthophoto products are given.