Photogrammetry and mixed reality in the recovery of decontextualized heritage. The gothic choir of Girona cathedral

Abstract

The decontextualization of the historical-artistic heritage to which a large part of the Spanish ecclesiastical centres has been subjected, is a clear example of the progressive loss of cultural heritage. The artwork, once it’s outside of the place for which it was originally conceived, is completely distorted, preventing historians, scientists, or visitors, from contemplating it entirety or to establish any hypothesis about its origin and original configuration. Inspired by the case of the Gothic stalls of the Cathedral of Girona, currently completely dismantled, this article presents a virtual reconstruction exercise to be integrated into an application for interactive visualization of the complex in its original context. For this, equirectangular images of the current building are geometrically integrated with the virtual model of the stalls reconstructed from the photogrammetric survey of part of the elements, still existing and scattered in different places. The technique makes it possible to hyper-realistically combine real and virtual images, offering the viewer a “mixed” virtual tour of the central nave of the cathedral by incorporating the reconstructed virtual model in the originally designed location. The proposed methodology supposes a new visualization strategy of this type of elements that, in an immersive and interactive, economic, and ubiquitous way, must allow an advance in the dissemination and recovery of decontextualized heritage.